Total Exploded Pahkitew Island
by SideshowJazz1
Summary: When Julie Sanchez, the rebel in a Catholic family, signs up for Total Drama Pahkitew Island. When she tips the balance in her first vote, the changes begin - Beardo gets to talk, for one thing. And while the outhouse isn't exactly Confession, the other campers better watch what they say. You never know who might be listening...R&R!
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Well, yes, here I am doing another "OC in Total Drama", but with a twist! You see, ever since I wrote "Bailey In Exile" and changed All-Stars a bit, I thought about changing up a few more seasons of TD with an OC! Well, "Island" doesn't need changing. And while "Action" and "World Tour" could use some tweaking, I'd already explored those seasons too many times – though if I did, Lindsay would win TDA and Owen wouldn't have come back. However, ROTI and PI...those were another story. And as I thought, I decided PI had more potential as a better season. The twins' storyline coming full circle, a villain better than Sugar, Beardo showing what he could do, more equality between challenge wins...so here it is!**

 **Plot: Julie Sanchez, a not-so-good Catholic girl, signs up for Total Drama Pahkitew Island. Her strategy is to get to know the other campers in a way that most people wouldn't condone. She's been to Confession for sixteen years, every Sunday. She's confessed her own sins to the priest – but not all. And if the other campers are smart, they won't confess everything either, because someone's listening, and she isn't a priest...**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own anything from Total Drama. I only own Julie Rosa Sanchez.**

I made my audition tape by having my phone video me, as I lounged back on my bed. "So...I guess you want me to tell you why I deserve to be on Total Drama. Well, I probably don't. Ordinary girl, go to school, go out with friends, go to Confession...oops! Did I mention I'm from this seriously Catholic family? My friends don't know – I'd be so embarrassed if this was for something other than auditioning for a reality show. If I had the million, I'd use it to get out of my family – just give them a proper wake-up call so that they'll let me follow a different religion if I don't try to leave and stop regarding my complaints as childish contrariness. Then-" I grinned, "Well, I don't know what I'd use the cash for once I decided not to leave. To blow or to save? Well, I'm probably boring you now, so I'll just cut it off here. See you on the island!"

I'd seen audition tapes for Total Drama before. After each person on Total Drama Island was eliminated, their audition tape was leaked online. And the people on Revenge of The Island had their audition tapes used in promos before the show aired. I'd chosen to go the normal route, like quiet little Zoey (who just explained why she wanted to be on Total Drama, sitting at her desk) and soft-hearted DJ (who listed his good traits but then started crying over his mom).

Then I decided to redo my audition tape. This time, I said pretty much everything I'd said last time, but I wore my track team outfit (forest green T-shirt with the number 5 on the back and seriously unattractive black shorts), my hair was in a plait, and I was sitting on the grass, legs stretched out. It made me look a little more interesting. It probably didn't hurt that I could be considered being from an ethnic minority – I didn't think they'd had a Mexican contestant before (shut up, Alejandro's _Latin._ Or Spanish – Sierra's blog about him said his family moved from Spain when he was little, but he used the word "Latin" several times. Although one thing I do have in common with him is I am bilingual – my parents moved from Mexico so they're fluent in Spanish and English, and so I grew up speaking both – just I mostly use English since we live in Canada). Anyway, when I played back my audition tape, it didn't seem too bad, so I sent it off.

 _And it worked!_

I was called to an airfield in two weeks' time, just when Total Drama All-Stars started airing. The letter said I'd meet the other fourteen contestants and we'd all take a zeppelin to Pahkitew Island.

My family didn't approve, of course, when I finally told them I was going on a reality show which would take place on an island for two weeks (yeah, thirteen episodes in fourteen days – for some reason, Chris McLean didn't want to spend too much time on this season). They hadn't even wanted me to watch the show, but all the episodes were online, so there was no way they could stop me watching it. Even the first episode of All-Stars had been leaked (I was looking forward to seeing the rest of it when I got home (although I'd miss the air dates as both that season and my season would be aired one after another, within the span of three weeks – one episode per weekday).

But the thing was, although my parents were deeply religious and didn't approve of my life choices, they weren't unfairly restrictive. Don't get the wrong idea about them. They didn't take my want to choose my own path seriously enough, thinking I just wanted to rebel and wanting me to repent and ask God for forgiveness. But I was never sorry. I didn't want to be a good Catholic girl. But even with that, even though they thought reality TV shows to win money were sinful, they were good about it once I got through all the telling-offs. They told me to "stay safe" and "play well". They even said that they'd make an exception when I came home and watch the season. I wasn't sure about that.

"I don't know if that's really a good idea." I told them. "I mean, it's _Total Drama._ If I've learned anything from that show, it's that everyone will do something they regret sooner or later on camera. Even the clear villains do things they regret. Even the goody-goodies like Bridgette have done a few things that they probably didn't want caught on camera."

Dad chuckled. "We know that, Julie. That's why we're so set against reality shows – it makes people greedy and selfish. But that's why it's up to you to make an example. But don't feel you have to be perfect – the atmosphere is vicious, after all, and I'm sure you'll want to survive. The occasional lapse in judgement can be forgiven, as well as you repent afterwards and remember not to do it again."

I pretended to take all the repentance talk seriously. But in all honesty, I'd thought about how I was going to play. I knew from watching Total Drama that there were certain people who got far and people who didn't. If Ezekiel and Staci had taught me anything, you had to have good social skills, or you'd be off the show superfast. But judging by Geoff's run, you couldn't afford to be too nice, or that would lead to a late elimination – late, but still too early to win.

Winning challenges was a good way to stay on top. Heather survived three eliminations in a row that way, callously orchestrating Trent and Lindsay's eliminations, and not caring in the slightest when Bridgette went. I couldn't tell who'd won All-Stars by just the first episode, but if Courtney kept up her attitude, she wouldn't be on the show for much longer. But threats got voted off, too. Leshawna was a great person to have on your team, and a great friend, but when the chips were down and anyone could be gone, she was a top choice to kick to the curb.

So I had a lot of different thoughts on how to play this game. I needed to be smart and stick to the right strategies. Help my team, but don't push it too far. Let other people put in their ideas. Be nice, make friends, but be prepared to stab one of them in the back if you're in trouble. Don't try to be friends with everyone – the sneaky ones will regard you as a threat. Since it's hard to get invincibility all the time, concentrate on staying under the radar – don't do too well in challenges – well enough to not be last, but not first, either – third in a challenge is a good final five position.

With all these rules I'd made for myself, I was ready to dive into Total Drama Pahkitew Island. I just hoped that cast would be full of Lindsays and Sams, and not too many Alejandros or Courtneys.

 **After all, Lindsay's sweet but stupid, and Sam doesn't seem to care where he ranks as long as he's not cut first. Alejandro is tricky and Courtney is vicious. Think Julie will like the cast she's with? What team do you think she'll be on...and who do you think will go home first with her intervention? Will it even be someone from her team?**


	2. Chapter 2

**All right, let's get this season started! Thanks for reviewing, OmniPlanckInstant, StarHeart Specials, Bloodylilcorpse, 123NumberGirl456, SilentSinger948, SuperKitty4789 and yeezynight14.**

 **Also, while I'm writing here, I am amazed that no one guessed correctly which team Julie would be on. It's true that there are many great characters on that team, but then there's several on the other team, too.**

I showed up in my track team T-shirt and skinny dark jeans. My hair was plaited, like in my audition tape, and I wore trainers (better to have closed shoes on a show like this). Most of the other girls, at least, weren't half as practical. Two of them – twins, probably – were wearing cheerleading outfits, of all things. Short skirts on a show with physical challenges? They wouldn't last five minutes. Probably the girl in the Snow White ensemble dyed pink wasn't going to last long, either, come to that. There were only two other girls who were dressed in a practical way – a tall black girl was dressed entirely in khaki – just a top and shorts with a matching hat, and a girl with slightly First Nation features had Converse, leggings and a loose but well-fitting top, perfect clothes to move in.

As a matter of fact, that particular girl seemed nice. None of us really knew what to say when we first got on the zeppelin. After a few minutes, the girl turned to the guy next to her and offered "Want some gum?"

The guy himself was the shortest person on the zeppelin. He was also grey, as if he never went into the sunlight. He spoke haughtily. "Your offer of simple confectionery will not save you from THE PURE EVIL OF ME! But yes, thank you." Seconds after he'd accepted the gum, he almost choked and spat it out. "Cinnamon! There is no need for you to be that spicy."

There was a skinny boy sitting to the side who looked sort of Indian, who chuckled at the grey guy. "That guy's a little weird." Well, that was tactful. I would have said he was delusional.

Just like the other boy who was wearing a fake beard, green robes and had started waving a little stick around. "I know many spells to ward off evil." he boasted.

The dark boy gave him a look of concern. "Oh. Good?"

"And there's nothing that can't be made sweeter with a song!" gushed the girl in Snow White clothes. Honestly, as she twirled off, I think she was singing that classic _Little Mermaid_ tune. And then she set off another dude – big, with crazy hair. He started making beatboxing noises, attracting the attention of the twins.

"Ugh!" exclaimed one of them. She glared at the other. "Switch seats with me, right now!" The other twin sighed and complied. Unfortunately, the minute the twins had switched, the bossy one took one look at the girl standing beside her. It was the tall one in khaki.

"GIANT!" the twin screamed.

"Are you and I gonna have a problem?" the tall girl asked in an accent I'd never heard before (English, maybe? Australian? New Zealand?), narrowing her eyes.

The twin grabbed her sister. "Switch back, now!"

I went over to them. "Excuse me, amiga," I said cheerfully, "But if you don't like either seat, why don't you just move away? Your sister can stay, since she seemed perfectly happy where she is."

The bossy twin acted aggressively. "Why should _I_ have to move?"

I shrugged. "I said that because I thought you wanted to."

At that moment, we forgot our conversation as a guy with hair that looked like he spent way too much time on it ran through the zeppelin, calling for Chris McLean, the host. "I don't get it. Chris! Chris has gotta be here somewhere! Anyone seen Chris? You seen Chris?"

His last question was addressed to a heavy girl with bright blue-eyes and candyfloss curly blonde hair. She slammed him against the wall. "Stop your fidgeting!" she snapped in a Southern accent. "You scuff my pageant shoes and I'll toss you out the window! You'll be squished flat in two minutes!"

The biggest nerd on the plane, a girl with red hair in a bun and glasses, began to correct her, but I could barely follow what she was saying. I think she was explaining exactly how long it would take the guy to hit the ground if he was thrown out the window and why, but she was talking too fast, plus Physics wasn't exactly my best subject (Gym and Music are my best).

"Wow." said a big guy with red hair. "That girl has some real brains, huh?"

The fifteenth contestant, a grubby-looking dude in a toque, reacted pretty violently to this. He immediately wrapped his arms around his head. "Brains? Whose brains? No one is getting my brains!"

I'm not sure if the storm we were heading into was a good thing or not. I mean, it distracted everyone from everyone else, and we didn't die, but air travel in a storm is never fun (unless you're in the window seat of a plane and get to see the lightning from above, where you know you're too high for it to hit you). And I always got airsick when there was unexpected turbulence on any kind of flight, even if it was just an hour's flight.

And then, suddenly, a new voice sounded in the aircraft. "Hello, newbies! Ready for some fun?"

I don't know how Chris did it, but he came out of nowhere. On one side of him came the guy who'd been calling him, on the other the Snow White girl.

"Yes!" they both cheered.

"Huh, a couple of keeners." Chris shrugged. "I'm sure a little pain and starvation will fix that."

After this, Chris finally explained what he was doing there. There were enough parachute packs next to the most accessible exit for all of us, but only seven of them contained actual parachutes. I gathered from watching the other seasons that he was going to make the zeppelin crash so we had to use them for his own sick amusement, but apparently not everyone else worked it out.

"Well, hopefully we won't need them." said the First Nations girl.

"Who knows?" Chris said cheerfully. "This season is full of surprises. Kinda like this!" He pressed a button, and of course, the engine failed.

Okay, so we found out how Chris had appeared out of nowhere. He'd somehow projected a hologram of himself on there, but he was really on the island. So all of us had to grab parachutes (including his sidekick, Chef Hatchet) and jump. I just had to hope I got one of the real ones. Around me, the others were all screaming and pulling. I pulled, and got...

A flotation device. I grabbed it immediately and began praying to God (hey, just because I don't want to live the Catholic lifestyle doesn't mean I don't still pray out of habit) "Father in heaven, please let me hit water and also survive."

I did hit the water. I was actually first in, and got splashed by the candyfloss-haired girl, the dark boy and the guy with the crazy hair. As I got out, I saw one of the twins landing with her parachute. "OMG, I did it!" she exclaimed.

"Break my fall!" called out the other twin before dropping on top of her. "Oh. Sorry." She clearly didn't mean it.

And...to quote the first twin, OMG, you won't believe this. The Snow White girl floated down safely with a tiny little bird on her, even though her parachute pack was as hopeless as mine.

"Thank you, my feathered friend!" the girl said happily.

After everyone was down, we had to learn everyone's names. Turned out the parachutes were just a way for Chris to make up the teams randomly – seven on that team, eight on the other (that's my team). First, he named the lucky ones.

"Scarlett, Topher, Rodney, Jasmine, Max, Amy and Samey."

"Uh, it's Sammy." one of the twins corrected in a quavering voice.

"Amy says _everyone_ calls you Samey." Chris said.

"Well, yes, but-"

"Cause you're the second twin. The lesser Amy if you will."

"But my real name is-"

"You're officially Samey." Chris said, as if that decided things. Well, not for me. I wanted to do things differently, and if I wanted to call her Sammy, I would. If Chris got on my case about it, I'd probably have to start calling her Samey, but until then...not that I'd even have to talk to her. At least the names were easy to remember – Scarlett especially because it matched her hair. Obviously Amy was the other twin – I couldn't tell them apart from this distance, but I guessed she was the bossy one. Jasmine was the tall girl, Rodney was the big red-haired guy, Topher was Chris' biggest fan, and Max was the short grey dude.

Finally, Chris named the team the Pimapotew Kinosewak, which he said meant the Soaring Eagles in Cree, until the First Nations girl on my team spoke up. "No, sorry, wrong! That means the Floating Salmon."

"Oh." Chris looked amused. "Then I guess you're the Floating Salmon."

My team was lined up on the other side of Chris. He named us next. "Shawn, Leonard, Ella, Julie, Dave, Beardo, Sky and Sugar. Your team is the Waneyihtam Maskwak, which in Cree means the Ferocious Ti-"

"The Confused Bears." Sky corrected (yes, she was the First Nations girl). Oh well, Floating Salmon sounded dead. Confused Bears wasn't as bad.

We even had team colours. The Pimapotew Kinosewak was green, and we were red.

I looked around at my team. So this was us. Leonard the wizard, Shawn with the toque, Ella the Disney princess, Dave who seemed pretty normal (the dark guy), Beardo the beatboxer, Sky who was apparently fluent in Cree, and Sugar the queen of candyfloss and pageant shoes. Oh, and me, Julie, the rebellious girl from a Catholic family. This would be fun.

 **The challenge will be next chapter. No changes yet, I know. But think about it. Julie's on Team Maskwak. Even with her contributions, the challenge will have some of the same elements. Is there something she could change?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Well, you're about to find out how the challenge changes! Also, I should mention here that I've changed things about confessionals. Each contestant has one or two confessionals cut up and put in different parts of the episode. Thanks for reviewing, SuperKitty4789 (guess you'll just have to wait and see...but at least one of those went into my plan), OmniPlanckInstant, Bloodylilcorpse, Gage the Hedgehog (I can promise there will be many changes) and yeezynight14.**

Our first challenge was to build our own shelters. Oh yeah, I should mention this. In the last season, Camp Wawanakwa, the original island, had sunk, taking everything with it except for the outhouse confessional. So instead of a summer camp setup like the last two seasons (plus the first one), we were roughing it. Huh. At least I wasn't too high-maintenence. I was betting Sugar wouldn't be too into it, though.

Sure enough, when Chris told us we had to build our own shelters, she complained "I'm too tired for that." She sat down on a rock, and as she did, I saw Beardo raise his hands to his face. The minute Sugar was down, a disgusting sound appeared to come right from her.

The girl jumped up, horrified. "That was _not_ me!" she insisted, saying that a pageant queen apparently never did that unless it was part of her talent.

But Chris didn't care. He hadn't finished telling us what to do. Apparently we had to sift through junk and get whatever was useful to build the shelter. While that was happening, Chef would keep shooting us with tennis balls.

"A glancing blow will sting..." Chris began, just as Dave got one.

"Ow!" he exclaimed, but added "That only hurt a little."  
"And a direct hit will take you right to the ground." Chris continued. This time, it was Max who got hit. "Will someone please help that little boy to his feet?"

I giggled at that. It was hopeless. Rodney pulled Max up, but the moment he let go, Max dropped back down.

It was time to move. "Bears, follow me!" Sky called. We gathered behind some rocks. Sky seemed to have taken leadership without even thinking about it. "Grab something good and make your way to-" she began.

"Yeah!" cheered Dave suddenly. "She's totally right, good call! I have some dirt on my hands but no big deal – let's do what she says!" I thought for a moment that he was being sarcastic, but no, he was serious.

Shawn was the first to go out. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He dodged the tennis balls like a pro and came back unscathed (I resolved to see if I could find out where he got those skills later on – he would be a major threat if he made it past the merge).

Then again, all he got was...

"Soup?" Dave exclaimed. "He grabbed SOUP? You can't make a house out of soup!"

"I once built a castle out of nothing but a sunflower and the eyelash of a dragon!" Leonard boasted.

Sugar looked admiringly at him. "There's no way we can lose! We've got a wizard on our team!"

I looked at Beardo. "How much of this do you buy?" I whispered. Beardo shrugged, making a slide whistle sound as he did so.

"Well, do you think Leonard really believes all that stuff he's saying?" I pressed. "To me, it sounds like he wants us to believe his LARPing is real." Beardo made a buzzer sound and grinned in agreement.

Ella went out next, singing " _Well a house is a home and a home is a house, this is not a dress – it's a skirt and a blouse!"_ So...so what? And why was she singing about her clothes, anyway?

It gets worse. Ella brought back _pink glitter._ And Sugar was only mad about that because she thought the glitter should be hers. At this rate, our team would lose for sure.

"Look!" I hissed. "The other teams have wood, a wheelbarrow, and rope. We need to get something more. What about all that corrugated iron? We could make something out of that!"

Dave looked more approving of that. Sky smiled too, and then said "Dave, you draw Chef's fire while Julie and Beardo make a run for the supplies." Beardo made a _ding-ding_ sound and gave a thumbs up. "Ready? Go!"

Okay, so I was fine. But for some really weird reason, Beardo ran in slow-mo. I managed to get three iron boards and threw two to Beardo, so we actually got back with five.

Sky was the best at dodging the tennis balls. Actually, she used a plank of wood to meet the serve and Chef got a direct hit to the head.

By the time Chris called for time (that meant we had to start building), we didn't have much. Five boards of corrugated iron, straw, rope, a hammer, glitter and soup. The boards would make a good roof or walls, but not both.

Leonard made his suggestion. "We shall build a wizard's tower!"

"Oh, yes!" Ella exclaimed. "I second that!"  
"Wizard says, Sugar does!" Sugar declared. "Who's with us?"

Beardo raised his hand.

Shawn, Sky, Dave and I looked at each other. "Anyone have a better idea?" I asked. "We could use the boards as walls, but we'd need one for a roof and they're not big enough. Or a thatched hut with the straw, but that's not big enough either."

So we did Leonard's idea. But even with a straw roof and glitter on it, the pile of rocks was useless as a shelter. I mean, there was no way to get inside, and no way would it fit all of us, even if we could get in.  
Plus it collapsed after we built it.

"I'd like to say it was a hard decision," Chris said. "But let's keep it real. Team Pimapotew Kinosewak wins the challenge!" The other team cheered and congratulated each other, apart from Max, who refused to high-five the twin sitting next to him when she offered, because "Evil does not high-five."

Anyway, guess what? They got food from a petting zoo takeout, and we got empty stomachs.

"Oh, one more thing." Chris said, once he reminded us that we had to go to elimination. "The outhouse confessional is open at any time, but I recommend using it before and after challenges."

A lot of people used the confessional that night. It was interesting to hear one or two of them. Look, I knew that confessionals were useful information. I'd seen the show so many times – Scott even listened in on one of Dawn's confessionals in the fourth season, and so he knew that she was on to him and used that information to vote that night (and I think Lightning overheard one, because he knew when Alejandro called him arrogant once). But no one else seemed to know the mine of information confessionals had. That meant it was free for me to hide and listen. It was easy to hear through the walls.

First, I found out what Shawn's fixation on brains was, and where his skills came from. " _In my mind, I'm always running from zombies, and if you're not, you're crazy."_ So he thought zombies were real and that was why he was intent on keeping his brains? Okay...weird. At least he seemed a bit more normal than our wizard. He also said that he wasn't going to sleep in the same place as us. " _Spend the night with a bunch of strangers that could turn into zombies while I'm sleeping? Ha, no thank you!"_

I also heard one of the twins making a confessional – must've been the one called Sammy. She was talking about the way she'd been treated as the lesser twin. " _This is so unfair. I auditioned for Total Drama to get away from Amy."_ So...that meant that she'd auditioned first, and Amy got the idea from her? Again, very interesting.

We all had to go to the confessional to vote people off before the campfire ceremony that night. I told the camera my vote. "Look, Leo, I'm sure you're great in a dark room with a bunch of princesses and elves and things, but it's not the kind of skill you need to play a game like Total Drama. Bye, buddy. Sorry I didn't get to know you better."

Still, that night was nerve-wracking. I was pretty sure Leonard was the biggest target since he cost us the challenge. But all the same, I was relieved when I got my marshmallow, the sign of survival. I got it third, even, after Shawn and before Dave.

Eventually, it came down to two competitors. Beardo, our sound effects expert, and Leonard, our challenge-costing wizard.

"Okay!" Chris grinned. "The last marshmallow goes to..." he paused. "Beardo."

Leonard was the first to take the new elimination device – thankfully not as disgusting as the Flush of Shame I'd seen on the first episode of All-Stars, but unfortunately not as safe as the Dock of Shame from the first season. No, this time, we got shot out of a cannon (well, at least it wasn't a catapult this time). And I wasn't sorry to see it happen to Leonard.

As the rest of us walked back to the rocks we'd have to sleep on that night (except Shawn, who had opted to sleep in a tree of all places – yeah, I've seen enough horror movies to know that zombies are too mindless to know how to climb so I guess it made sense), I found myself walking with Beardo.

I jumped when I heard a husky voice speak. "That was scary. I thought I was going to be the first off for sure."

I looked up at Beardo. He was smiling back at me. "You..." I began. "You can talk?"

"Yeah." Beardo looked a little sheepish. "I'm just a little shy. It takes me some time to warm up to new people."

I shrugged. "But you can make sound effects? You sure didn't seem shy."

"Sound effects are different." Beardo said reasonably. "I know I can do them well. I always know what one to do. But at first, I never know what to say."

I smiled reassuringly at him. He seemed nice. "Well, you're talking now." I pointed out. "But I think your sound effects were annoying our team. You should probably talk to us, too."

It wasn't a good night, for anyone. We couldn't exactly make a fire on the rocks, and if we could've, we'd have to control it. Besides that, it started raining about an hour after the campfire ceremony ended. It wasn't a supercold night, but I really wished I'd worn something warmer than a T-shirt. I didn't get much sleep. I know for a fact that Sugar was OK, because she was snoring all night, but I could hear Sky tossing and turning for hours, so she probably had the same problems as me. Who could know?

I just had to hope we'd have time to find a better shelter tomorrow.

 **Don't worry, Julie, Shawn will find the cave for your team soon. Just focus on winning!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Okay, time for the next challenge! I think this was one of the better episodes. Without Leonard trying to levitate the pig, who will take the wall, and who will have to pair up on Team Maskwak? Thanks for reviewing, yeezynight14, Gage the Hedgehog (although I don't understand what you mean in your reviews), OmniPlanckInstant, Bloodylilcorpse, SilentSinger948 and SuperKitty4789.**

I was actually the last person to wake up the next morning. I had forgotten where I was for a moment, then I heard Sugar's voice yelling and opened my eyes blearily, trying to remember the names of all my teammates. Shawn was still absent, but everyone else was around, talking. It looked like Sugar had been yelling at Ella, who was looking confused and upset about something. Sky was trying to play peacemaker, and Dave was hovering nearby. Beardo was hanging back.

I decided to join him. "Not going to get into this conflict, huh?" I whispered.

"Actually, it's not an argument." he answered. "Ella wasn't really doing anything, but Sugar took offense to something she said and it's not going over well."

"Guess I missed the action." I sighed. "Oh well. I think our team's going to have to look after Ella in this game. She's so naive."

I liked our team overall, though. Despite Ella's innocence, Sugar's vanity and Shawn's paranoia, I felt like our team got on well. Dave I wasn't sure whether I liked or not. He'd seemed quite nice on the zeppelin, but our other teammates seemed to be getting on his nerves. Sky was all right, though. She was definitely unofficial leader. Just before the challenge, she got all of us together (except Shawn, who still wasn't back) and said "Guys, with our diverse set of skills, I think we can win these challenges, but we have to work together. Come on, let's do it! Go Team Maskwak!"

"Go Team Maskwak!" the rest of us echoed, except Dave, who followed suit more reluctantly afterwards. Beardo made a party noisemaker sound.

Beardo was definitely the member of the team I liked the most. He was cool and chill, friendly and his sound effects made me smile. Even though he was talking now, he still made sound effects sometimes.

The intercom blared into action just after Sky's pep talk. "Campers, the only good thing about this morning is that it's gonna get worse...for you. There's a path heading into the forest. Follow it to today's challenge!"

We met Shawn halfway through the path. He'd probably been up earlier than us, but he hadn't come to join the team because he was busy foraging for our breakfast. He'd apparently found a lot of edible things growing, so we were fed and ready for the next challenge by the time we reached Chris.

Our challenge was a greasy obstacle course relay, or as Chris called it, the "Oof-stacle Race of Hilarious Hurts". He took us through each obstacle – the greased up bridge over thorns, the greasy zipline, the greasy tubes, greasy tyres to run through, a wheelbarrow race over grease, and finally a greased-up wall. We just had to do one section each.

Oh yeah, and we didn't have a relay baton. Instead, we would pass a greased-up pig to each other. "Not so much batons as bac-tons!"

Topher burst out laughing. "Good one, Chris!"

"Thank you, Topher." Chris clearly liked Topher. I didn't. The sucking-up was going to get pretty grating, the longer Topher stayed.

Scarlett was the one to point out the problem. "There are only six obstacles, and we're both teams of seven."

"Two of you on each team will have to double up on one section of the race." Chris told her. "Now, decide who's on what, cause the race is about to start!"

Our team conferred. "Sugar should take the last section." Shawn suggested. "Back on her farm, she plays with greased pigs all the time!"

"Are you kidding?" I scoffed. "We need someone smaller and more agile on the wall. Sky, you're good at gymnastics, right? I think you should take the wall. Sugar would be good at any of the others!" I added to placate the pageant queen. "In fact, I'm so confident that she'll do well that I'd like to pair up with her for the relay...if that's all right. There's no way we won't get the lead!"

Sugar shrugged, but she looked agreeable, so that's what happened. We didn't really figure out our spots, though, apart from Sky on the wall. We just ran to whichever one was closest. Well, okay, not all of us.

I thought that Sugar and I should be on the obstacle that had the other partnership. It turned out the twins were on the tubes together, so I pulled Sugar over to that obstacle. Beardo ended up on the bridge, Shawn on the zipline, Ella on the tyres, and Dave on the wheelbarrow (he'd looked a bit worried at the mention of grease, but I hoped he would do all right).

We were pretty level at the start of the race. Beardo was up against Rodney, and both of them kept slipping in the grease on the bridge. But Beardo just about got the lead. Just.

This gave Shawn the chance to get to the zipline first, but Topher, Kinosewak's zipliner, watched as Shawn freaked out (the pig tried to bite him in the forehead) and he ended up falling down the chasm while the pig went to Sugar and I.

Topher got the pig and began to self-advertise. I could hear him from the other side. "And it looks like gorgeous player Topher is learning from Shawn's mistakes." Then he looked straight at the camera. "Which pork will place first? Find out when we return, on-" Yes, you heard me, he tried to do Chris' job. He apologized profusely, but I don't think he was actually sorry.

Anyway, it was mine and Sugar's turn first. But it would've been a lot easier if Sugar hadn't spent a whole lot of time cooing over it like it was her baby or something. I literally had to drag her into the tubes while the twins were just getting their pig. And when we finally did get it through, Sugar wouldn't hand the pig to Ella. "I'm keeping her...him...is mine! Forever!"

Ella paused, then said "Well, maybe I could just piggysit her for a bit?" And without warning, she began singing " _Hey there little girl, or fella, if you came over here, it'd be mighty swell-a!"_

The pig immediately squealed happily and ran to Ella.

"I love you, grease pig!" Sugar called after it, but it was too busy dancing across the tyres with our princess, who was still singing.

The twins weren't finished until Ella was halfway across. "I'm sweaty and disgusting!" complained one of them, the one that had the least grease on her. "I look like _you_!" She glared at her sister.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" said the other twin, who was almost covered in grease. "But...you were the one who scared the pig."

"You beg my pardon?" the first twin snapped. "Whose fault is this?"

"Mine."

"Yes! Always!"

Okay, that was out of line. I remembered which twin was which – still couldn't tell them apart, but the mean one was clearly Amy. But it didn't matter anyway. My part of the challenge was over, so I had a chance to tell the twins what I thought of them.

"For Christ's sake, you two!" I yelled. "What is with you? Sorry, I forget what Chris said your name was-" I pointed at Sammy (of course I knew her name, but I knew the show well enough that Chris might penalize me if I called her by her unofficial but real name), "but I can't believe you're taking this! Are you just going to let people walk all over you? Grow a backbone, can't you?"

"Yeah." Amy taunted her sister, looking smug. "You're so _weak."_

"You're one to talk!" I snapped at her. "Sure, it's partly your sister's fault for letting you think you can get away with this. But I can tell you started putting her down before she started letting you and I don't get why! I thought you two were sisters! _Family._ "

"Unfortunately." Amy muttered, now turning her glare on me.

"Yeah, unfortunately for her." I snarked. "Amy, if you need someone weaker than you to pick on, try some insects. Your sister has a better right to stand up for herself, and even if she's so weak she won't, it doesn't give you the right to pick on her! And as for you," I looked to Sammy again, "Unless you want her to keep picking on you, don't let her think she's right! Get your revenge!"

I stalked back to my place next to Sugar, leaving Amy lost for words and Sammy looking guilty, like not standing up for herself was some kind of crime.

At that moment, the intercom came to life with an air horn. Our pig stopped dancing with Ella and squealed in shock. Ella glared up at the intercom. "You scared him!" she scolded.

Chris' reply? "There is NO singing required in this season. NONE!" Ella gasped.

At least she got the pig back on track straightaway, before passing it on to Dave. "That mean man gave Mr Trufflehunter a dreadful fright!" she said in a trembly voice.

"His name's Grease Pig!" Sugar yelled across the tyres.

Dave started off all right. He would've continued on if not for Team Kinosewak's pig. Scarlett was on tyres, and she'd picked things up pretty well for her team, running nimbly through the tyres, dropping a pecan trail for the pig, so she didn't even have to touch it to get it following her. Then she had to pass to Max, and he gave her this weird futuristic thing to hold for a moment. Then she plugged something in on it, put it on the pig's head, and it did something strange. The pig's expression changed, and it started throwing grease at first Dave, and then Max. But at least Max wasn't a germophobe. Dave started freaking out halfway through the challenge, and even once he'd passed to Sky, he kept screaming about needing hand sanitizer. I tried to calm him down, but I couldn't.

The only reason Dave snapped out of it at all was because Chris called out "This just in: Amazon beat by gymnast, though only just...whatever. Team Maskwak wins the challenge!"

I started cheering, as did the rest of my team. Despite having been up against strongwoman Jasmine, Sky had managed to win the challenge for us. Although, to be fair, Jasmine was probably only halfway up because they'd been set back at the start with Beardo passing to Shawn way before Rodney passed to Topher, and they'd just been falling further behind all the time – if we'd been level, Jasmine probably would've beaten Sky.

Still, I couldn't say no to takeout food, even if it was just beaks and feet.

Even better, we finally had shelter. Thanks to Shawn, that is. He'd found a cave for us to sleep in. "I figured another night of sleeping in the rain isn't gonna help us win the next challenge."

"You finally going to come down from your tree?" Dave asked. He'd had a chance to wash the grease off and was looking a lot better for it, and not just because he was clean.

"Nuh-uh." Shawn said decidedly. "Thanks for asking, but no way am I gonna be an undead snack!"

I couldn't help rolling my eyes at how seriously Shawn took this zombie stuff. Oh well, I still liked him. He was a valuable team member (even if he wasn't great with today's challenge) and a good guy.

"So, who do you think's going home?" I asked Beardo. "I'm absolutely sure Topher and Scarlett won't be. They were pretty solid today."

Beardo paused. "Probably Rodney or Max." he said after some thought. "Even though Jasmine lost the challenge, I could hear her talking before the challenge. She's definitely team leader – they probably won't want to vote her out."

"I think the twins are on the chopping block, too." I added. "They weren't great today."

"You're telling me!" Sugar chimed in uninvited to the conversation. "Them cheerleader girls are hopeless! Bet the meek one gets sent home. At least the other one's got some spark!"

I wondered if Sammy would get voted out. Then I wondered if Amy would be mean enough to vote her own sister out. She'd been plenty mean at the challenge, as if she thought Sammy was just a weak echo of her, rather than her identical twin (with, I might add, a more pleasant if nonexistent personality), but I doubted that would be enough of a reason to vote her out.

I decided to listen to confessionals again before confessionals, but I got out later than the night before, since I wanted to finish my share of the takeout first. Still, I managed to get one from Team Kinosewak and one from Sky. Rodney was just coming out, so he saw me, but I only had to wait a few minutes to overhear the next one, which happened to be from Sky. She'd noticed how hard Dave had been trying to impress her for the last couple of days, and that led to a point that was good for me to know – her attitude. " _I think Dave has a bit of a crush on me. But I'm not here to meet boys, I'm here to win."_ Not only was it good to know that Sky had her mind on the competition, it made me like her better. Not that I needed to – I liked her already.

From Team Kinosewak, I got to hear Amy explaining why she was so hard on her sister. It was the stupidest reason ever. _"After I was born, Mommy and I had to wait seventeen minutes for Samey to come out. Ugh, can you imagine? If I could have walked, I would have left without her!"_ She even went on a little rant about how she didn't like it that I'd interfered in their argument, but I left before she was finished, since it was boring and I wasn't getting anything new out of her.

I was right about the twins not being big enough targets. When I heard the cannon, I waited outside the cave to watch the team coming back. I could only see their silhouettes, and I recognized two skinny petite ones, a tall one, a small squat one, one with a perfect coif, and one with their hair in a bun. No hulking great overall-wearer.

Rodney had been voted out for his early blunder.

 **Yeah, I got rid of Rodney. He's not my least favourite PI character (that dishonour goes to Amy), but his joke got old fast. I'd rather spend more time developing the twins and Beardo than keep him around. Especially since he doesn't have many inter-team interactions, which means there wasn't much I could do with him. Sorry, Rodney fans.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Okay. Who will go home this time? Wanna take a guess? Thanks for reviewing, yeezynight14 (mine too – just beating out Taylor and Justin), OmniPlanckInstant, Gage the Hedgehog, Nicky Haugh (1, I've been OK, and 2...well, she won't be gone, but she'll get enough comeuppance to at least start seeing sense), SilentSinger948, Bloodylilcorpse and SuperKitty4789.**

I got up early the next morning. The sun was rising, but everyone else was scattered around the cave, still asleep. Ella was curled up, sleep-humming melodically. Sugar, thankfully, wasn't snoring, but she was still on her back, and her breathing was still pretty heavy. Sky was more stretched out, but she slept more quietly, and Dave, who was close by, twitched a lot, but apart from that, seemed more peaceful. Beardo wasn't quite silent. I couldn't understand any of his sounds, but I was getting used to hearing him making random sounds, so I guessed he did it asleep, too.

I crept out, planning to possibly forage for some food myself, but first, I wanted to take a trip to the confessional before anyone else was up and able to eavesdrop themselves. So I checked for any of the others before shutting myself into the outhouse. "Well, this isn't like Confession at home at all." I joked. "At least there aren't any priests listening to me confess everything and say I'm sorry when I'm not even sure if I am. The thing is, my plan to get through this game is to find out everyone's buttons and know how to push them – motivate my team, weaken the other team...but I'm not gonna say how I'm gonna do that yet. But one thing I gotta say – this may be the game's version of Confession – but it's way more fun here than in church!"

I wondered if the whole of my confessional would be aired. I was sure they didn't air every confessional, or all of most of them. Back in the first season, I'm pretty sure they cut out part of Cody's air guitar confessional, and they cut Lindsay accidentally using the outhouse as an outhouse into two parts – okay, so all we saw was her sitting there reading a magazine, but considering that in the second part she gasped and tried to cover her face, and that there was a watery sound...yeah.

I found some berries, but not much else. Luckily, when I got back to the cave, Shawn had arrived with more food and Sky had gotten some clean water for us.

Ella was so happy she started singing about it, in fact. The only reason no one, not even Sugar, yelled at her was because Shawn cleverly diverted her. "Ella, maybe you should go sing to the other team as a sign of friendly competition?"

Ella gasped. "Oh, that is a wonderful idea!" And she danced off, humming happily.

It looked like I wouldn't have to forage tomorrow, though. Sky offered to help Shawn the next day, and Dave instantly volunteered.

"Sounds great." Shawn muttered, looking a little bit annoyed.

I nudged him. "Why don't you want help? Three of you will get us double if not triple the amount of food you get us each day. I mean, that'll be great next time we lose a challenge?"

"I just think everyone's letting their guard down too much." Shawn admitted. "You have to look out for yourself if you wanna survive the apocalypse!"

I smiled in amusement. "You worry too much, Shawn of the Living-Totally-Not-Dead. Just being friendly with people doesn't mean we're not going to put ourselves first in a dangerous situation. I'm still putting myself first in _this_ situation, since it's a competition. And I _know_ for a fact thatSky feels the same way." I'd gathered that from her last confessional. I looked over at my newest friend. "Same thing with you, Beardo?"

"Hm?" my friend looked up. "Sorry, Julie, didn't catch what you were saying."

"I was just telling Shawn that letting down our defenses and making friends didn't make us any less effective at protecting ourselves in a dangerous sit-"

I was interrupted by the intercom. Chris had obviously just heard our absent teammate offering a song. "NO ONE, ELLA! It's challenge time! All butts to the meeting area in five!"

By the time we got there, Ella had already arrived and was looking excited to start the next challenge. Well, that is, more excited than anyone on this show had any right to look. Yeah, I'd wanted to be on the show, but the excitement was more about the mental and social parts of this game, not the challenges.

This time, Chris had called the challenge Doom Balloons. Basically, we had to grab as many balloons as we could get, then spread out. The balloons were all full of unknown contents. "It's always a surprise!" Chris told us.

"Yay!" cheered Ella. "Who doesn't love a surprise?"

"None of you." Chris answered her question. "None of you will love a surprise."

Once we heard the air horn, that was the signal to attempt to throw our balloons at other campers and get them to pop, pouring the contents all over them. At that point, the player was out. Last clean player won for their team.

It was times like these I was glad I could carry a lot of things. I had five balloons on me by the time the air horn sounded, and no one else was in sight.

It wasn't until about twenty minutes after the game began when I finally came across someone. And after all that, it was someone from my team.

"Hey, Julie."

I grinned. "Hi, Beardo. I've got an idea. Why don't we team up? Watch each other's backs and warn each other if we see someone from the other team approaching."

My friend grinned at me and made a _ding_ quiz show sound in agreement.

I have to say, I was very lucky I didn't get caught. Being silent was of the utmost importance in the challenge, and guess what Beardo ended up doing. I don't think he could resist it. We were trying to walk so quietly, that he started making creaky floorboard sounds.

"Could you _stop_?" I finally snapped. "You're gonna get us caught!"

"Sorry," Beardo apologized, "I just do it by instinct. I can't help it!" He paused. "I don't mind if you want to go it alone because of it."

I thought about it. "No offense," I finally said, "But if you really can't help making sound effects, that's the best idea. See you after the challenge!"

I actually dropped a couple of my balloons before I could throw them at anyone. Near the end of the game, I heard voices.

"Way to make a fool of yourself in front of everybody, Samey!" That had to be Amy. Her voice became mocking. " _Oh, I got the food, and I'm the nice one! Blah blah blah!"_

"Sooner or later, Amy, everyone will know what you're about!" That had to be Sammy. I crept closer, as the twins continued to argue, and aimed at Amy.

I threw, and...yes! Score! Amy was covered in a sticky, almost clear substance. She took one look at me, and screamed in frustration. "You loser! You're almost as-"

I interrupted with the most childish, yet fitting taunt. "I'm rubber, and judging by that stuff on you, you're glue, so that bounced off me and stuck to you." I began to sing. " _Amy's a loser, Amy's a loser..."_

Sammy burst out laughing, and Amy scowled. But really, I should've seen it coming.

No. Two seconds later, and the mean twin had covered me in a green, almost liquid but not quite substance. Pea puree, it felt like. Oh well, glue was worse.

I scowled, but shrugged. "By the way, Sammy," hey, I was going to use her real name while Chris wasn't around, "I think you better run from your sister before she tries to use you as a towel. See ya!"

After a long time of aimless wandering, Chris' voice finally came through the loudspeaker. "Game over! Team Maskwak wins the challenge!"

Shawn had single-handedly won for us. Everyone else got something over them. Beardo had canola oil, Sky still had some stingers from bees, Dave was going crazy with itching powder all over him, and Ella and Sugar were covered in mustard, relish and something brown.

"I only got caught because _she_ kept singing!" Sugar complained.

"I'm sorry, Sugar." Ella said sweetly. "When my heart wants to sing, I can't help it!"

After I'd washed the puree off, I decided to see if I could find Team Kinosewak's treehouse, so then maybe I could find out who they were voting for. Just to be prepared, I swear, not to manipulate it! But...well...let's just say that our cave wasn't the only one. I heard a voice just as I was passing one of them.

"Give me that! You don't deserve to eat. And I just talked to the team about how you lost us the challenge. Enjoy being cannon fodder." I recognized Amy's voice, and peeked around the corner to see the twins. Amy was holding an apple as she finished speaking ."See you at the elimination ceremony, _Spareamy!"_ She took a bite of the apple, and went off somewhere else, laughing.

Sammy pretended to laugh too, and although her next words were quiet, I heard her speak. "And _you_ enjoy that Manchineel fruit."

I came around the corner properly and sat down next to the nice twin. "What did you do?"

Sammy shrugged. "Nothing. Whenever I have something Amy wants, she always takes it. I figured she wanted that Manchineel fruit."

"It looked like an apple to me." I admitted.

Sammy's expression became a devilish smile. "Same for me, too. Jasmine stopped me from making that mistake yesterday. See?" She held out her hand. Her palm was red and blistering. "I'm going to go soak it in seawater in a minute – that heals it. But..." she paused. "How come you're asking me that stuff? Why are you being nice to me?"

I shrugged. "Maybe I was a little harsh yesterday, but I was being nice. I told you to stand up for yourself. And you have! At some point, Amy's going to realize you're not going to let her bully you all the time." I smiled. "Anyway, see you later." I'd had an idea. Sammy didn't deserve to leave the game just yet, but I knew of someone who did. And I also knew of someone who would be happy to help me, however unwittingly.

I found the most innocent member of our team easily. She was looking a bit down. "Hey, Ella." I smiled. "I was thinking, it might be fun to go for a walk through the forest. Wanna come with me?"

Ella beamed. "I'd love to, Julie!"

So I purposely wandered around, trying to talk to Ella so she couldn't start singing too loudly and alert anyone to our presence. And it seemed to be my lucky day, because we found the treehouse. Time for my plan!

"Hey, Ella," I said loudly, "Did you notice how Topher's been sucking up to Chris?"

"Oh, yes!" Ella said cheerfully. "He must be so excited to be on here, getting to meet Chris! I like Chris too, most of the time..." she added, frowning a little, "But not like he does. I suppose everyone needs a role model!"

"Well, yeah," I admitted, "But it's just like how Sierra did it in World Tour! I'm sure you watched that season?"  
"Oh, yes, I was a huge fan of that season!" Ella enthused. "I even went to the local mall and performed all the songs. I'm not allowed there any more, but even the security man said I had a beautiful voice!"

I nodded. "Yeah, you do, but my point is, Chris is going to hate it if Topher keeps sucking up to him. He likes it now, but what happens when the novelty wears off? Sierra was Chris' favourite for awhile, but she went too far. I hope Team Kinosewak keeps Topher around, though. Chris is so much more sadistic than he was back then. I wouldn't put it past him to sabotage them in hopes of getting rid of Topher!"

"Oh, he wouldn't do that!" Ella looked shocked. "That's too mean for anyone to do."

I smiled gently at her. "Ella, you see the good in everyone. That's a good thing. But don't underestimate Chris – he actually took it as a compliment when Leshawna said something about how he was cold with no soul – and that was before his year in prison. Trust me, if Topher keeps going, he's going to hand us a few free wins." And with that, we walked off. I kept talking at the same volume for a few minutes, but then went back to normal. My job was done.

I got one more confessional that night. It was from Amy. I'd already heard her calling her sister "Spareamy", but because of her pronunciation, I hadn't caught on that she meant it as "spare Amy". But her little confessional about it told me all right. She was whining because Jasmine complimented Sammy on taking Dave out and didn't believe it when Amy claimed she'd done it. " _Since when does anyone take Samey's side? She's just a wannabe me, a spare Amy. Oh, her name should be Spareamy! I am gonna change her birth certificate as soon as we get home!"_

But my plan had worked. When I watched the team come back from elimination once again, I saw the twins (one of them was coughing and holding her throat – I could hear her from there), I saw Jasmine, and Scarlett, and Max...but Topher was gone.

Obviously I'd affected a few of the treehouse-dwellers.

 **And Julie pulls her first manipulative move of the game. Plus, she's finally begun to talk to Ella. Okay, I know a lot of people like Topher, but he got on my nerves all season long. I was SO relieved when he left. Since there's a few new storylines, I decided it might be a good idea to remove his attempted usurping of Chris' position. Hope you liked it too!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Right. Truth or Scare. Fun, right? Even without Rodney. _Especially_ without Rodney. Thanks for reviewing, Liz the Sweet Writer (kind of a spoiler, don't you think?), Nicky Haugh, Gage the Hedgehog, SilentSinger948, OmniPlanckInstant, Bloodylilcorpse, SuperKitty4789 and yeezynight14.**

I didn't wake up so early the next morning. By the time I was up, most of the others were awake.

"Beardo, why didn't you or someone else wake me?" I complained to my friend.

"Sugar tried to, but she couldn't." Beardo explained. "I even tried using a car alarm sound, but I guess you really needed the sleep."

I knew I was blushing with embarrassment. I knew I slept heavy, but if I knew Sugar, I'd probably slept through her yelling in my ear.

Okay, I was right. The minute she saw me up, she remarked "Well, look who decided to join us! I was thinking you were in some kinda coma or enchanted sleep or something!"

I shrugged. "I guess I was just really tired. Not used to a game like this."

Only about ten minutes after I'd woken up, the speakers went on. "Morning, campers! It's time to start today's fun activity! So get your butts over to the meeting area!"

At the meeting area, Chris had a screen set up, with two log benches, one for each team.

Ella smiled at Sugar. "I'm saving you a seat, Sugar!" He patted the place next to her.

The blonde glared at her. "I know what you're up to, singy-pants! Gals who sit on the end always get less camera time!" She shoved Ella off the log and plonked herself down in her place.

As for me? I felt a surge of anger towards Sugar and a protectiveness towards Ella. Don't ask me why – I guess I just knew Ella needed someone to look after her. And so once she was back on the log, I sat on the end next to her, and when she caught my eye, I smiled. Ella bravely smiled back.

Chris told us what the challenge was. It was basically Truth or Dare, but he called it Truth or Scare. The screen set up would show one of us, and either a halo (truth) or a flame (scare). Each truth told or scare completed would get our team a point.

"In this case, Amy has gotten a truth." Chris began, as the screen stopped on Amy and a halo. I stole a look at the real Amy. She looked better than she had last night, but she was giving Sammy a death glare. Sammy, who was sitting next to Jasmine, had her head down, trying not to look at her sister.

"But the answer will be revealing. It will explain a dark truth that will destroy her in the eyes of her newly-found friends. Or not. Whatevs."

"How do you know I won't lie?" Amy asked harshly.

That's when Chris introduced us to a new creature – Clucky, a chicken who apparently worked like a lie detector. If we lied or didn't finish a scare..well, Chef put metal collars on everyone and Chris had two remotes to give each team an electric shock. Ow!

"How come you're not using that electric shock lie detector from the third season?" I asked. "That worked great."

"Because there's no point in giving just the liar a shock when I can do this to the whole team!" Chris said, pressing the button for our team again. He laughed, and a few of my teammates glared at me. I smiled nervously.

Amy got a pretty interesting question. "Who do you dislike most?"

Funny thing. The mean twin looked around nervously, but then said. "Well, obviously, it's that wannabe Samey."

Clucky immediately went insane and started squawking like the world had ended. Chris pressed Team Kinosewak's shock remote.

"Clucky tells us that Amy just lied!" Chris announced. "Funny, with Amy's behaviour in the last few days, I wouldn't have guessed."

"You don't hate me the most?" Sammy whispered, looking half-pleased.

"No." Amy huffed. "I don't hate you any less. There's just someone I hate more. Count yourself lucky, sis."

But I just had to say something. "She should count herself lucky to have a sister like you? Wow. By the way, thanks for helping our team, _Sparesammy!"_

The twins both gasped at that.

"Moving on!" snapped Chris. "Team Maskwak, it's your turn." The first screen stopped on a face. "Oh, what a coincidence. Looks like your chattiest teammate is getting a..." The second screen stopped swapping. "Truth! Julie?"

I looked Chris in the eye. "Bring it."

"Sure! What kind of religion were you born into?"

To be fair, I knew after Amy's lie, that Clucky would know if I didn't tell the truth. But I didn't want my team to think I was all about guilt-tripping and praying and confessing sins.

"Catholic." I mumbled. Clucky, who'd been watching me carefully, put his head on one side and then clucked mildly.

"Truth!" Chris announced. "One to Team Maskwak."

There were a lot of challenges after that, so many I couldn't keep track of them. Shawn helped Sky finish a jug of mineral water in thirty seconds, but she belched when Dave went to kiss her (it was either her or Shawn). Max lied when he said he feared nothing, but Scarlett got a point for making up a bear...you know, things like that. Kinosewak was pulling ahead for a while, because their team was so good at scares. We were about half and half, plus we got a penalty when Ella told a truth (if she could change one thing about herself, it would be whatever was stopping her and Sugar from being friends) but Sugar didn't believe her and her screaming scared Clucky, so Chris counted it as a lie. Beardo failed a scare, too, as did Shawn when he was meant to pick his nose and wipe it on the person next to him (his try was too dramatic for Chris).

But slowly enough, we caught up, and after about two hours, everyone had gotten at least one turn if not two, and our scores were tied. Sugar even got a point for doing a scare that was even grosser than the one she was meant to do. She was meant to pet a tarantula, but she ate it, and Chris agreed that patting her stomach afterwards was "close enough".

Me? "How much do you bet it bites her before it's digested?" I whispered to Ella.

The princess looked shocked. "Oh, I hope not! It would be terrible if it hurt her!"

Whatever. At any rate, we were tied. So Chris decided on a tiebreaker. "One player from each team will go head-to-head in a dual challenge. Winning team gets immunity. Losing team gets shocked – and sends someone home."

He chose Team Kinosewak's player first. Of all the five it could have been, one of us was opposing...Scarlett. The brainiac. Okay – we'd never know how she'd do until the challenge was announced.

And as for us...oh, what a surprise, it was me. I'd been OK with my truth and hadn't failed at anything yet (unlike Shawn, Dave, Beardo and Ella – although Ella's loss wasn't her fault).

Our challenge was simple. Chris made up two little sacks, one with each remote in it. All we had to do was undo the sack and shock the other team before our opponent.

I think I panicked. That's the only way I can rationalize the way I went all fingers and thumbs. Scarlett, on the other hand, calmly and methodically pulled at various parts of the knotted rope. I started getting the hang of it after a minute, but not fast enough.

I was just about to get as far as only having a double knot to undo when another electric shock froze me. Team Kinosewak had won, and I doubt that even next time they lost, they wouldn't be getting rid of Scarlett!

But before anything else happened, I had to make sure no one voted me off. And to do that, I'd have to talk to our team leader.

"Sky?" I said innocently as we walked back. "Are you planning on voting for me tonight?"

Sky instantly blushed, proving my guess correct. "Well..."

"Cause you know I wasn't the only one who lost a challenge." I barrelled on. "And I also won one of them. I mean, I know Ella's loss was Sugar's fault, really, but all the guys lost at least one challenge."

"Well, I wouldn't have won the mineral water challenge if it wasn't for Shawn." Sky admitted softly. "And that was maybe the reason Dave lost..."

"Well, you know what I'm saying." I continued. "I trust you to make the right decision. If voting me off is what you do, so be it."

At least, I did have a couple of allies. I knew that even if my slight guilt-trip didn't work on Sky, Ella would fall for it in a heartbeat. In seconds I had her promising she would vote for someone else. And Beardo and I made an agreement that we would vote for Sugar.

Okay, so Sugar and I were in the bottom three that night. "Julie, you could be going home because you cost your team the final win." Chris said. "Sugar, you could be going home because...well, I'm not sure. Maybe some people are blaming you for those fights with Ella. And Beardo-" yes, my closest friend on the island, "You could be going home because the only challenge you did resulted in shocking your team."

Beardo hung his head.

"Sugar, you're safe." Chris added, tossing a marshmallow to her. He paused. "Julie...so are you. The loser is Beardo!"

I gasped. How come so many of my teammates voted for him? I guessed it was a 2-2-3 split. Too bad. Well, actually I hoped it was a 1-2-4 split, then I could believe only one of my teammates had it in for me.

I hugged my friend before he had to go to the cannon. "It was fun while it lasted." I told him. "Keep in touch, yeah? I'll probably see you at the finale."

"Good luck, Julie." Beardo grinned back, followed by another "good luck" that sounded like it was through a megaphone.

I was sad to lose Beardo, I really was. He'd been a great friend to me for the last four days. It wasn't long, but considering that we only had two weeks on this show, he'd been my friend for a quarter of the time. Guess I'd need to find a new ally sometime soon.

 **Hope I managed to make Beardo more relatable to the team in some way. Also, a little development – Sammy is not the person Amy hates most. It's not as obvious as you might think (ie: Amy doesn't do self-loathing, so it's not her). Take a guess who the person is in your reviews, and whoever gets the closest will get a special mention.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Okay. Xs? Wonder how this will play out with both twins still in the game? Oh, and no Slowtox without Topher to make Chris get insecure. Thanks for reviewing, OmniPlanckInstant, SilentSinger948, Bloodylilcorpse, Gage the Hedgehog and the guest reviewer. And the winner is...Bloodylilcorpse! Only two of you guessed who Amy hated most. It's her parents. They are the ones that make Amy so insecure that she has to demean her sister to feel good about herself.**

I got up early again the next day. Everyone else in the cave was still asleep for the moment. I decided to go around the island. Maybe I could help Shawn forage, if he was awake, or maybe I'd see some of the others.

As it was, I actually met Sammy and Jasmine, who were both foraging, chatting pleasantly.

"Um, hey." I said, smiling.

Sammy looked a little nervous when she saw me, but she smiled back. "Hey, Julie."

"Hi." Jasmine said. "Julie, right? Sorry if I'm wrong, I haven't really gotten to talk to you."

"No, you're right." I said, trying to think of what to say next. Now I heard Jasmine's accent again, I decided that it was definitely not an English accent. It had to be Australian or New Zealand. I just wasn't sure which.

Sammy spoke up. "Oh, by the way, thanks for what you said yesterday. Once Max remembered you calling Amy a spare of _me,_ he called her that for the rest of the day."

"Amy wasn't too pleased," Jasmine added with a chuckle, "But to be honest, she kind of had it coming."

"She's gone sort of quiet, now." Sammy added. "I think she might finally be starting to accept that I'm not just her doppelganger – or at least, that it goes both ways."

I never did find Shawn in the end, but I did find some berries, and even met up with Sky and Dave, who were foraging. But they were acting a little awkward around each other. Chris called us to the lake pretty early, so we didn't have time to bring it back to the cave.

"Can I ask what happened?" I whispered to Sky.

Our unofficial leader cast an anxious look at Dave, and then said "He said he liked me. And...well...I don't want to date anyone in this competition. I like Dave, and maybe something could happen after we get home, but...well, that's the thing. There's something I need to tell him, but he wouldn't let me finish."

"Just make him listen after the challenge." I suggested. "Tell him that you don't want to date anyone during the competition. It's probably a good idea, if Courtney's total meltdown in the third season is anything to go by."

Meanwhile, Ella was starting to recite a "friendship poem" to Sugar. The blonde simply interrupted her with "Here's a poem to stick in your earhole: Roses are red, manure is brown, _get outta my face!"_

Ella sighed. I gave her an encouraging smile, and Sky said "You know, they say the meanest people are the ones that have a hard time believing in themselves."

"That's why pageant girls always have trouble." I added. "Like that little girl on _Toddlers and Tiaras_ who was asked if she was beautiful, and she cried and ran away because she thought the interviewer meant she wasn't beautiful enough."

Ella nodded, her face crumpling as I mentioned it. Then she brightened up. "She needs my support!"

Poor Ella! She was setting herself up for hurt. And that's when my plan started developing. If we had to go to elimination again, we needed a target. And hopefully, today's challenge could help me paint a target on someone's back.

Chris called today's challenge the "Smash, Splash, 1-2-3 X Dash." Basically, our teams each had a platform with a beam that led to a second platform. There were dueling sticks in our team colour on the platforms. One by one, we'd have to cross the beams, grab a stick and bring it back to the team platform. We had a board with three hooks on our platform, and we'd place two sticks on each hook to create an X. The first team to get three Xs won. Oh yeah, and our way of stopping people from the other team winning was to try to knock them into the water. Our beams were plenty close enough.

"What is your fascination with seeing us hurt each other?" Sammy spoke up.

Amy just scowled. "The better question is, what is your fascination with seeing us get messed up? If my hair gets wet, someone is going to pay!"

But Chris didn't answer. We had a little more information to take in. Every team member had to cross the beams at least once. And we had to swim to our platforms (Sugar used the opportunity to dunk Ella).

Dave went first, and he was up against Amy.

"Get ready to take another swim, loser!" the mean twin called as they dashed past each other's beams.

"No way!" Dave said, his voice slightly shaky despite his words. They both got a stick and made a run for it. Amy swung, but Dave managed to duck. I thought for a moment that Amy was going to lose her balance, but she kept it.

"Maybe she's tougher than she looks." I whispered to my team as Dave came back with our first dueling stick.

"Start hurting each other!" Chris yelled through the loudspeaker. "Or I'll get bored. And that will be bad news for all of you!"

We sent Sugar up to hurt our next opponent (she was muttering something to herself). It turned out to be Sammy, and I saw Jasmine whisper something to her before they went up. In a minute, the two girls were yelling at each other.

"Mom hates you!"

"Pixie wannabe!"

Once they got the sticks, they actually did start fighting with them. I started to gather by Sammy's cry of "You're the worst sister ever" that she was pretending Sugar was Amy.

Oh, but Chris still wasn't satisfied. He had to bring out some weird bear who had a lot of scuba gear. It knocked Sugar into the water, and then gave both our teams the "I'm watching you" sign.

I looked at the other team. I could tell Scarlett wanted Max to take his turn. It was the perfect time to put my plan into action. "Hey, I think Max is going to go next. Ella, you're about his size, aren't you? You should go, try knocking him into the water."

Ella agreed, and I took this opportunity to put a new plan into action. As Ella passed, she called "Hello over there!" to Max.

His reply? "You're closer to doom than you realize!"

"We are _so_ lucky to have Ella on our team, aren't we?" I said cheerfully to our team. "She's so nice and really loyal." I locked eyes with Sugar in particular. "She's a great friend."

To be honest, Max helped me. I was pretty glad I hadn't chosen to go myself when I saw what happened. When Max returned with his dueling stick, an electric eel was stuck to it. When he touched sticks with Ella, she got electrocuted.

And Sugar burst into giggles.

That was good for me. In fact, I couldn't have planned it better myself, even though I felt bad for Ella. "Sugar!" I said in a horrified tone. "How can you laugh? Electrocution is so serious – Ella could have been killed by that! I could understand if she'd been mean and vindictive, but she's been nothing but nice to you for the last five days, writing you poems, complimenting you, being totally selfless. How can you throw it all back in her face and laugh when she's electrocuted?"

I was the one who helped Ella back up to the platform, too. I think the boys had noticed how I'd treated Sugar, but Sky hadn't.

"I-I'm sorry I fell in." Ella mumbled, still a little disorientated, as Dave picked up a shoe she'd lost in the water, helping her put it back on.

"That was a low blow!" Sky declared forcefully. "In my world, unsportsmanlike conduct gets penalized!" She ran across the beam before I could offer to go instead.

"I saw what you did!" she yelled at Scarlett, Kinosewak's next player. "See you on the way back, cheater-teamer!"

But Sky didn't have a chance. She swung too hard, Scarlett ducked, and Sky fell into the water. And I knew, I just knew, from the little smirk on Scarlett's face, that the electric eel had been her idea. Looked like I had a little more in common with her than I thought. I'd have to keep a close eye on her – otherwise she could turn out to be another Scott (minus the challenge-throwing).

Since Jasmine was next up on her team, I suggested Shawn go next. I was pretty sure that he probably knew Jasmine better than I did, because if my calculations were correct, they would be foraging in the woods around the same time.

And...well...it was pretty much the same as Dave and Amy. Jasmine sort of took a swing at Shawn, but she didn't seem to really have her heart in it, and nor did Shawn.

"Come on, you guys are killing me here!" groaned Chris from his platform. "Fight! Hurt each other!"

"What was up with that?" I whispered to Shawn. "No trying to knock her off?"

Shawn gave a sigh. "I was going to. I mean, she's cool, but I know I need to win. But-"

"Oh, I get it!" I exclaimed. "You like her, right?"

Shawn looked a bit scared at the idea, so I changed the subject. "Anyway, tell you what. If you're up again, pretend you're facing a zombie. Does that help?"

Shawn actually did smile this time. "Yeah, it does. Thanks, Julie!"

But now it was my turn. Amy went up again, and this time, I actually did knock her into the water. Yay me! We now had three dueling sticks and Team Kinosewak had five. We had to work hard to get the last three first.

We did catch up, until it was 5 to 5. Sky and Ella both got us another point. But then I sort of pushed Sugar into going next, when Scarlett was going again. And guess what? We lost!

Look, it was all part of my plan.

I caught Ella alone when we went back to the cave, and whispered to her "Look, there's something I should tell you. I think you should stop trying to make friends with Sugar."

Ella gasped. "What? Why?"

"She doesn't like you." I said gently. "She doesn't want you to be friends with her. Be friends with me instead!"

Ella's face brightened a bit, and she said "Consider it done! I'd simply love to be your friend, Julie!"

"Well..." I said, "As we are friends, can I ask you to vote Sugar tonight? I think she's sick of being here anyway."

"Well, if she doesn't want to be here..." Ella said slowly. She nodded.

I just had to hope the rest of the challenge had helped my team see what a liability Sugar was. And I was getting sick of being around her, to boot.

And, okay, I _did_ get a little worried when Sky ended up in the bottom three. And Ella was, too. But luckily, Chris didn't keep up too much tension.

"Sky, you let your mind be clouded by anger at the other team's strategy, sabotaging yourself." Chris said. "Hopefully you learn from the mistake. You live to play another day!"

Finally, Chris looked at the last two girls on our team. "Which means, today's loser is..."

Ella looked nervous. Sugar's face was set. I crossed my fingers, praying like crazy. _"Please, please, God, listen to me now. Ella doesn't deserve to be bullied any more. Sugar doesn't deserve to win this. Please, God, please let the boys and Sky have voted my way..."_

"Sugar!" Chris finally said.

Sugar gasped, stood up and...burst into tears. Well, I didn't see that coming. First time someone on the show that mean had ever done something like that. I remembered Courtney and Heather threatening their lawyers (yeah, Heather really did that, but then she _had_ just lost most of her hair), Justin and Alejandro complaining about how much beauty left the show with them...but as far as I remembered, Sugar was the first to cry. Huh, maybe she had more to her than I thought. Oh well, she still didn't deserve to win.

We all watched her take the cannon.

"Any final words?" Chris asked her.

I knew that sometimes he just asked that and then didn't let them finish, but this time, Sugar got her chance. "I personally believe that competition shouldn't be based on sticks, but on your general awesomeness! Which means I should not be in this here cannon!"

"Well, maybe you should've been smart enough to realize that we didn't like the way you were treating someone who only wanted to be your friend!" I yelled up.

And as Sugar shot across the sky, we heard her call "I'M COMING, WIZARD!"

Okay. She'd probably get stuck at some studio or resort with the other losers, so she probably would see Leonard again. Nice for her. And at least we were rid of the pageant queen and her snoring.

I could totally sleep easy that night.

 **What's the point of having Sugar around when we have another antagonist? I know those who don't find Sugar funny mostly hate her. So I hope you like that I kicked her off early! Oh yeah, and I don't own _Toddlers and Tiaras,_ but I did see a clip of a little girl crying because she thought the interviewer was making out that she wasn't beautiful, just by her asking "Are you beautiful?"**


	8. Chapter 8

**I don't get why people think this episode is only mediocre. I consider it pretty funny. Oh, and BTW, notice something, guys? Something Ella can still do without a penalty? Thanks for reviewing, OmniPlanckInstant, Gage the Hedgehog, Bloodylilcorpse, yeezynight14, Liz the Sweet Writer, KilllaKirika, SilentSinger948, SuperKitty4789 and PokemonFTW.**

I got to the confessional early again, the next day. I only got two confessionals, but they were worth it.

The first was from Sammy. She was extremely excited about her prospects. " _I kind of wish Amy wasn't still in the game, but things are going so much better, even with her around! The rest of the team's pretty nice." Her voice became a little sadder. "They still call me Samey, though. Even Jasmine. But I guess I'm lucky to have made a friend at all."_

The other confessional was from Shawn. And I found out something extremely interesting. " _I told Dave that I'll find Sky. Once I've done that, I'm going to have to think about whether I'm going to tell Jasmine how I feel. I don't WANT to like her – but I don't think I can do anything about it! Julie was wrong – making connections really messes with your head – if I like Jasmine, I have to protect both of us from the apocalypse! I'm not sure what I want to focus on – surviving the apocalypse for later, or Jasmine for now. Maybe I should leave telling her until later..."_

So Shawn liked Jasmine! I mean, after yesterday, it was pretty obvious, but still, it was nice that I had it confirmed. I wondered if there was a way I could use that. Maybe, if he didn't say anything by the time of the merge, I could find out if Jasmine liked him back (there was probably a good chance of that), and see if there was any way to turn it into a game-changer.

Sure enough, once I got back to the cave, everyone had gone, so I had to go and forage for food on my own, and I still had time to make a confessional. "Five days here, and I feel like I'm on top of the game! I have a friend on my team in Ella, for one thing. I don't think Sky, Shawn and Dave _dis_ like me, plus I know that as long as I'm a team player, Sky, at least, won't vote for me. And as long as Sky's OK with me, I'm pretty sure Dave will follow her. Shawn's a wildcard at the moment, but with the others on my side, I should be fine. But the merge should be coming up...probably at the start of next week. That could be a problem – I think Max and the twins won't be too much of an issue, but Jasmine will definitely be. And Scarlett might be a threat – she's competent, at least. But Jasmine's the biggest threat going into the merge, at the moment. I doubt the others will vote her off – she seems friendly as well as skilled. Oh well," I smiled, "Just have to see how things turn out!"

But before I could say anything more, I heard the loudspeakers. "Hey teams! Proceed to the meeting area. It's time for me to laugh at your pain! There will also be a challenge!"

When I arrived, most of Team Kinosewak had arrived, but only Sky from our team had arrived. Shawn came running up soon after me, shooting a smile at Jasmine. I guessed he was too shy and unsure of what to do to show anything else.

As for Jasmine? She barely noticed. She was looking around in confusion. "Something's weird with this island." she said, still staring at the scenery. "Those trees were closer yesterday, and that mountain wasn't there before."

"And I am a hundred percent sure that you are a few koalas short of a swarm." Chris replied.

"A _swarm_ of koalas?" Jasmine said incredulously. Oh well, if Chris' implication was what I thought it was, Jasmine's ethnicity was just confirmed as Australian. Definitely not New Zealand, then. Oh well, the outback was more exciting than a bunch of birds on an island, especially since the really famous ones only came out at night, and they were just brown birds with long beaks and short wings.

Ella was the second-to-last to arrive, and Sky immediately noticed her red eyes. "Ella, what happened? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." sniffled Ella. "It's just that my heart is filled with sorrow."

Was it nice that Sugar was gone! I knew she would have laughed her curls off if she'd been there, and despite Ella's annoying naivety, I was her friend, and I felt that it was my duty to protect her. I put my arm around her. "Tell us what happened." I said softly. "But only if you want to."

Ella nodded. "I should say something. It's about you, Sky. I thought Dave liked me, but it's you who captured his heart."

Well, that made sense. Sort of. I guess I'd sort of noticed Ella watching Dave in the last day or so – maybe it was his helping her put her shoe back on, Cinderella style, that made her think he liked her back. And he'd clearly been smitten with Sky from day one.

As for Sky? She immediately broke into a smile. "He does like me!" she said out loud. "Yes!" Then she remembered that our teammate was heartbroken. "I'm sorry. And I'm sorry about my smile. Are you okay? Am I still smiling? I am so sorry."

"You can stop switching sides any time, Sky." I said snarkily. "Ella knows it's not your fault Dave likes you instead of her. Right, El?"

Ella sniffled a bit, but managed a small smile. "Right, Julie. I can't stand in the way of true love, after all."

"Sorry I'm late!" Dave finally put in an appearance. "I was...um..."

"It's okay." Sky smiled at him. "Hi."

Chris got started on the challenge. He was standing in front of a vending machine – in fact, it had those weird candy fishtail things that the teams in the third season made commercials about. Oh yeah, and Owen liked them, but they made delicate-can't-eat-anything-unhealthy Alejandro barf (who was the loser that time, Al).

Anyway, what happened, was that Chris had one gold coin for each team. He gave them each to a monkey (ours had a pink ribbon necklace, Kinosewak's one had a blue). They got a headstart, then we had to try and get our coin from them. First team to bring back their coin and put it into the vending machine won.

"I have a secret weapon." Dave whispered to our team, taking out a banana.

I made a face. "Total myth. Bananas are really bad for monkeys – there's too much sugar in them, and they can't digest it. I bet our monkey will just grab the banana off us without giving us the coin. Then it'll be on a sugar high, and that'll make it even harder to grab."

"Where'd you hear that, Julie?" Sky asked, looking interested – even a little impressed.

"The zoo." I shrugged. "You know those information boards about the animals, meet the gorillas and all that? It said they never feed the monkeys bananas unless they're hiding medicine in them."

"Great." Dave sighed. "So there goes that idea."

"Okay!" Chris called. "You can go after your monkeys...right...now!" He blew the air horn, and we set off.

"Bet the vending machine gives up today's food." I remarked. The rest of the team gave me a 'no shit' look, and I sighed. "Didn't you see what was in it?" I began to sing what I remembered from the episode – I'd seen it a million times online, so I'd memorized most of it. " _Total Drama Yum-Yum Happy Go Time Candy Fishtails, better than no-no! Total Drama Yum-Yum Happy Go Time, tastes so good, wash your face!"_

Sky and Shawn laughed, Ella managed a small smile, and Dave grimaced, obviously remembering the episode. "Okay, so we don't really want the food reward." he admitted. "But we've lost twice in a row!"

"True." I admitted. "Okay, guys, focus on the pink ribbon!"

That worked. We found the monkey easily enough, but we couldn't find a way to get her to give the coin up. In fact, when she realized how much we wanted it, she...well, she swallowed it.

"Looks like the Heimlich maneuver is in order." I muttered. "Shawn, Sky, one of you needs to grab her so we can get her to cough up. You two are the most agile – but not both of you – the monkey will get you crashing into each other."

"I'll do it." Sky volunteered. But before anyone could move, a bear came up. And you know what? The freaking BEAR ate the monkey. So now we had to make two animals puke up something to get what we wanted. I just hoped the monkey's stomach acids weren't dissolving the coin just yet.

"There's no way to solve this!" Shawn complained. "It's a coin, wrapped in a monkey, trapped in a bear!"

And then, Sky had what was possibly the worst idea EVER. "The coin's in there," she pointed out, "So let's just bring Chris the bear!"

Before I could say why this was a bad idea, Dave immediately said "That is...an awesome, awesome plan! I am NOT terrified! Let's do it!" Oh, yeah. Risking your life to impress the girl you like. Maybe Dave wasn't quite as sane as I thought – meaning that he was sane when hygiene wasn't an issue.

"No way! Dave, you don't need to kill yourself over this." I cried. "Sky, we need to put the coin into the vending machine, remember?"

"Oh..." Sky's expression became anxious again. "Yeah, I guess you're right. So what do we do?"

I paused for a moment, and an idea came to me. "I know!" I looked at our most musical teammate. "Ella, we need you for this. At least, this is how we start. Ella, you need to sing for as long as you can to distract the bear. While that's happening, the rest of us need to sneak up and give the bear the Heimlich maneuver. Anyone here who doesn't know how to do it?"

"Um...actually, I don't." Dave confessed, but he was the only one. Sky and Shawn were both nodding.

I shrugged. "Okay. It's not that hard. If we don't get the monkey first time, come help us. Otherwise, Shawn, Sky and I can do it. We need to do it as a chain, because we can't reach around the bear individually. Sky, can you go in the middle? I'll do it on one side, Shawn, you do it on the other."

I paused, making sure our team understood. Then I grinned. "Okay, Ella...now!"

Ella began to sing. It wasn't any words – just a sweet tune, but the bear seemed to enjoy it. Its eyes were fixed on Ella, so the rest of us were able to sneak behind it. The three of us wrapped ourselves close to the bear and then, Shawn and I thumped at the same time.

Call it beginner's luck, but the monkey flew out, and Dave, despite it being covered in bear saliva, caught her.

"Keep singing, El!" I called out. "Let's take the monkey out of here. Hang on to her, Dave – we don't want her escaping again."

We took it back to our cave to work out how to get it out.

"Should we do that again?" Ella suggested.

"It's too small." I argued. "We'll have to do something else."

But we were too late. By the time we'd thought up a plan, there was a call from the loudspeakers. " _Game over! Team Kinosewak wins the challenge!"_

I wasn't sure how to vote that night. Our weak link for the moment was Dave. I asked Ella who she was voting for, but she said she hadn't decided. "I don't really want to vote anyone off. I like everyone on this team."

"Shouldn't that be you like everyone, full stop?" I teased. Ella giggled, but she didn't look as if she really knew how she was meant to react. "It's a good thing." I told her quickly.

I tried to gather confessional information again, but there wasn't much to hear. I got Dave talking about how Sky's idea of bringing back the bear was horrible, but he went along with it to impress her. Strike another mark against him. I think Sky would've respected him more if he'd been honest.

That's about all I got. I voted that night with no regrets. "Sorry, Dave. You seem like a nice guy, but you're the weakest member of our team right now. Plus I think that Sky doesn't want to be tied down competing with a boyfriend, so you might be better off pursuing her when she's not preoccupied with the game."

And sure enough, Dave was voted off that night. He didn't cry, but he was definitely shocked. "Me? Why? I mean...I..."

"Sorry, man." I said. "We'd gotten rid of the obvious weaknesses."

"B-but...but..."

"Dave, listen to me." Sky said, her voice gentle. "I need to tell you something before you leave, about you and me. I like you, but I don't want to get on a relationship because I want to focus on the game, and there are complications at home. Once the game is over, we'll talk again. Can we put things on hold until then? I'm not saying no – I'm just saying I'm not ready yet."

Dave's expression changed a little bit. He looked hopeful. "Really? You – that was the 'but'? You just wanted to wait until the game was over? I can work with that."

Sky smiled. "Thanks, Dave. I'm sorry you got voted out. We'll see each other after I win, I promise."

It wasn't too sad to see Dave taking the cannon. He'd gotten something out of the game, after all. He wasn't sad himself. We all waved as he was sent flying.

And then there were four. We really needed to step up our game in the next challenge. I'd just have to hope that we did better.

 **So yeah, I gave Dave a happier ending. He will be back, of course, but his feelings towards Sky won't be so intense. Yeah, Sky hasn't told him about her boyfriend, but who knows? She might have enough time to break up with Keith when the game's over.**

 **I just realized, most of the guys have been voted out. Oops...never fear, one of them will make it to the finale!**


	9. Chapter 9

**I quite like this next episode. The caves? Bring it on! Plus, Julie might just lose her team – and that means she might get to see a bit more of Team Kinosewak! Thanks for reviewing, SuperKitty4789, Gage the Hedgehog, Bloodylilcorpse, Pokemon FTW, SilentSinger948 and OmniPlanckInstant (I know, but the next few eliminations will rectify that to a point).**

I had more luck with the confessional, the next morning. This time, the confessional I heard was actually from Scarlett. I should probably have guessed that she and Max had teamed up from the way they'd been talking to each other back during the X baton game, but it sounded to me like their teaming up was not exactly friendly. Once I gathered what Scarlett was talking about, I caught exactly what she was saying. " _I need him gone. When people realize how dense he is, they'll know I made all his gadgets!"_

Well, I knew Max thought he was evil. So, if what Scarlett was saying was true, Max just didn't have the skills to create evil on his own, so she was doing most of the behind-the-scenes work for him.

Once I knew she'd left the confessional, I went in myself. I didn't want to give away my eavesdropping, so I changed my words a little bit (no prizes for guessing that the producers would probably want to keep my eavesdropping as a surprise). "So...I'm still trying to work out Team Kinosewak. Jasmine's still the clear leader, the twins are...probably no threat. I'm not sure how they're doing right now...huh, maybe I should try to find a way to talk to Sammy and see how things are going on. And then there's Scarlett and Max. I don't think Max is a threat, but I'm starting to think there's a lot more to Scarlett than meets the eye. I mean, yeah, I know she's smart, but I get the feeling she might be hiding something."

I think I must've been very, very lucky that day. Or very unlucky. When Chris called us to the meeting area, the first words out of his mouth were "Today's challenge is simple." I knew from watching the other seasons that he probably didn't mean it, but everyone else gave a sigh of relief. "Simple...and _deadly_!" What did I tell you?

So, Chris said that we each had to get into these giant orbs in our team colours and work together to roll the sphere to the other side of the island.

Pretty much all of us dived in. I noticed one of the twins shoving the other out the way, and I heard her calling "Me first...for once."

"Okay, but it's _my_ turn to be first next time we do something like this!" the other twin said as she got in.

I was last to get into my team's orb. But we still had to wait a while, because Team Kinosewak was still waiting for Jasmine.

Yes, _Jasmine._ It seemed that she was claustrophobic. First Chris made some joke about her still being on Australian time ("I actually have no idea if that's ahead of or behind us..."). That alerted her to the fact that she had to get in, but she still couldn't do it. Chris tried threatening her with the cannon, but that still didn't work. Eventually, he pretended to be sympathetic...so that he could get Chef to shove her into the orb while she was still unprepared.

Finally, the doors were shut, and none of us could see anything but red-tinged darkness.

"You might feel a slight drop!" Chris yelled from the outside. "Ready, set, _go_!" We felt a push, and...

Trust Chris to make nothing out of a life-threatening fall! I don't know how deep the drop was, but it wasn't anything like slight.

Ella was the first out of our orb. She groaned a little. "Are we still alive?" she said weakly.

I managed to climb out and checked that she was all right. "Nothing's broken, right?"

Slowly, Ella managed to stand up, checking all of her limbs. Finally, she smiled. "I think I'm fine, actually! That was a little scary. I hope everyone else is okay!"

Sky and Shawn seemed pretty much unhurt. As for Team Kinosewak, the twins were still lying there. Jasmine looked exceptionally terrified for someone who was smiling. "Oh, look!" she exclaimed. "We're at the bottom of a deep dark cave! How about that?" There were other passages leading into different

"So now what?" I wondered out loud. "Chris better have a good explanation for pushing us into a chasm!"

"Oh, don't worry, I have one." A monitor flashed on, and Chris' smug face appeared. "Your _real_ challenge is getting out of this cave!"

"Why bother with the bogus challenge?" Scarlett questioned.

"If I had said I wanted to cram you into giant balls and drop you 140 feet into a cave, you all would've moaned and whined...this was easier!"

He had a point. But what did he expect out of nine teenagers after almost a week of roughing it? All teenagers whined, even when they were treated well.

Whatever. Anyway, Chris pointed out the bags of supplies. Sky and Max checked them out for each team. First Max. "Rope, climbing accessories, night-vision goggles...useless!"

Yeah, I was starting to see Scarlett's point. I did pocket the Beardo beatboxing CD in our pack, but there was nothing that would be of use to us.

Finally, Chris told us that we could go through any passage, but some would be easier to get through, or faster than others. "First team across the finish line wins!"

Once the monitor went off, Sky spoke. "So, it's all about choosing the right tunnel to get out fastest?"

"Fast would be preferable." Scarlett spoke up. "This pit seems to be structurally unstable."

"What if the tunnel collapses while we're in it?" Amy said in a trembly voice.

"And that's why you made me pretend to be you on school camps involving two groups caving." I heard Sammy muttering. Unfortunately, Amy's fearful comment had affected Jasmine.

The tall girl pounded on the walls. "Out!" she shrieked. "Gotta get out!"

"Uh, maybe pounding the walls and yelling isn't a good idea." Shawn said in a hushed voice. But I don't think anyone could've shaken Jasmine out of her panic. I quickly darted into the nearest cave. So I was safe when the cave in actually began – again, caused by Jasmine. Who knew she'd be such a liability, ever?

I, luckily, wasn't alone, though. I was standing just inside, hoping my team would come in when something knocked into me.

"Ow!"

"Sorry, I didn't realize anyone else was in here. Um, who is it? I don't recognize your voice."

"It's me, Julie." My eyes began to adjust, as I realized who I was with...well, if I hadn't recognized the precise voice and know-it-all tone already. "Scarlett, right?"

"That's me. And-"

"I'm here, too!" added an annoyingly nasal voice. "Now bow to my undeniably extreme evil, opponent!"

I gave a sigh. "Okay, I'm bowing. Now we should probably work together to get out of here. I don't know what's happened to my team, and I don't know about yours, either."

Luckily, we weren't completely in the dark for long. The others had enough night vision goggles for all three of us (probably one of them was supposed to be for one of their other teammates). And I would be stupid if I didn't take advantage of being alone with half of Team Kinosewak.

As I discovered, Max was pretty easy to get to know. What I saw in him was what I got – delusions of grandeur, a desire for evil but not realizing what evil really means, arrogance – so I stopped bothering with him after a couple of minutes. However, my attempts to get Scarlett to talk were met with short, polite responses. I couldn't get her to say anything revealing.

I actually made a confessional about it that evening. "Okay, that girl is good." I said. "I'm betting she watched the other seasons and doesn't want to give anything away because that's a sure way to get kicked off. Unfortunately for her, I don't give up that easily."

I eventually gave up, but I resolved to keep trying to get information once the merge began. Finally, after several minutes of walking, Scarlett actually said something without being prompted. "This cave is weird."

"Maybe the cave thinks you're weird." Max teased.

Scarlett pointed at some spikes further up. "Those stalactites shouldn't be here."

"And where should they be? Wyoming?"

I gave a sigh at this jab. The dwarf was really getting on my nerves. "Max, shut up." I said. "Do you know anything about stalactites? No? Well, I don't, either. I'm pretty sure Scarlett knows more than we do. Stop undermining her comments."

"How dare you speak to me that way!" Max attempted thundering. Really, he just sounded like a little kid having a tantrum.

I shrugged. "Whatever. Let her finish, anyway. Scarlett?"

"It's just that there isn't any evidence of mineralised water deposits on the cave floor." Scarlett explained.

Max scoffed. "And I suppose you find it odd that there's also several cameras and a large monitor over there?"

"Cue Chris, right?" I said. "We've found the monitor!"

There was a pause. The monitor stayed blank.

"Oh." I shrugged. "Guess he's watching one of the other caves right now."

The monitor flashed on. "Hey, guys! Welcome to the Spike Zone. Try to stay quiet, or all those stalactites will rain down and skewer you like kebabs."

But of course, being who he was, Chris couldn't just let us get through the spikes unharmed. No, instead, he decided to send a crocodile in.

"Remember, your entire team has to cross the finish line." Chris reminded us. "So no leaving behind legs or hands, okay?"

Max cowered for a moment, then tried to run, but Scarlett stopped him. "Wait! Why don't you train it to be your reptile minion?"

Surely she wasn't serious. Even someone as dense as Max wouldn't do something like that, and Scarlett would know that, so she couldn't really expect that to work.

Well, more fool me. She knew Max better than I did. His first reaction? "That's a brilliant idea!"

Well, whatever. Scarlett was already running past the stalactites, so I followed her.

"Not interested in continuing your team's winning streak, huh?" I teased.

Scarlett paused, her face thoughtful. Then she finally said "I suppose I can trust you not to say anything, since we're not on the same team. Our team is getting thoroughly annoyed with Max. He set a trap yesterday that almost cost us the challenge. Your team walked right underneath us with your monkey, in fact – Jasmine yelled at Max for a while. The twins were pretty angry too – I think it must be the first time they've been united on a subject. So I feel that sacrificing one win to get rid of Max may actually be beneficial to our team."

"Even though he'd be a wonderful choice to bring to the finale?" I pointed out. "He's not a strong competitor."

Scarlett shrugged. "I'm only trying to do what's best for our team."

As it was, we didn't leave Max behind, anyway. He got bitten by the crocodile, and started screaming. The stalactites began to fall from the noise. Scarlett and I dodged, and Max was lucky to survive, but the croc wasn't so lucky.

Except it wasn't a crocodile. It was all gears and wires.

"It was mechanical?" Scarlett's green eyes lit up from behind her glasses. "Hey, I bet everything down here is. And it's all controlled by remote! If I piece together a transmitter to send out signals, who knows what we may find?" She was more excited than I'd ever seen her, pulling out different bits and pieces of the crocodile and pressing different buttons. "I bet they're all using neighbouring frequencies!"

Whoa. Okay. Despite not learning much from asking questions, I sure was learning a lot more about Scarlett than I thought I would.

Within seconds, Scarlett had made a remote. "Done. Now I'll try the universal signal for garage door openers."

It worked! Believe it or not, an _elevator_ door opened, and the three of us walked in. Even less believable, Max still thought the cave was an ancient secret passage used by the Cree. When Scarlett pointed out the elevator had carpeting and music, his only explanation was "Clearly the Cree had taste. And you no longer need this useless thing." he added, taking Scarlett's remote and throwing it out of the elevator.

I saw the look of panic on her face as the door closed, and I instantly knew what I had to do.

"Do we have time to go back for it?" I asked. "We don't, do we? Max, that was a really stupid thing to do. Don't you realize how much evil could have been done with that remote if you'd let Scarlett keep it? I thought you wanted to rule the world. With that remote, you could rule this island."

Max looked guilty, but he didn't apologize to Scarlett. As for the girl herself, she didn't exactly look happy, but she flashed an impressed look in my direction.

By the time we arrived, everyone else was already back. My team looked a bit worse for wear, though – their clothes were sort of brown and there was a weird stench coming from them.

"They must've found a faster elevator!" Max exclaimed.

"Elevator?!" Chris looked really frustrated. "Look, none of you won! I said the first team to cross the finish line, and none of you did. You skipped dozens of awesome challenges! We don't even have enough footage for an episode! You're all disqualified! This whole episode is a bust!"

And you know what? Both teams had to go to elimination. And while my team went to get washed up (later on, they explained to me that they'd ended up leaving the cave via the confessional toilet, so yeah, they had to swim through number one with flakes of number two to get out – good thing Dave had been voted out, huh), I went back to the confessional to see if I could find anything out.

Sammy was actually the first to use the confessional. She was in a really good mood. Since she'd been with Amy, who was nervous about caves, and Jasmine, who was claustrophobic, she'd had to take the lead during the challenge. " _I'm not so worried about being voted off, now. I'd thought about voting for Max, but to be honest, I still feel like I'm stuck in Amy's shadow. And with her hopeless perfomance today, I think I can convince Jasmine to help me vote her off. If one of us talks to Max and Scarlett, we might be able to get them to vote the same way_."

So Amy was on the chopping block? Finally!

I also got an interesting confessional from Scarlett – one that made me realize why she'd teamed up with Max at all. She was smart, he wasn't. He wanted to be evil, and she...well, her confessional was about how she was experienced with mechanics. " _My brother pulled my hair once, so I made his remote control toys come to life and attack him in the night. Every night, for six years. He's still in therapy."_

To be honest, it made me shiver. Me, the heathen who broke my family's heart and had been working to eliminate so many people! The worst part was the way she said it. She spoke casually, as if it was a perfectly normal thing to say. Trying to lose to get rid of Max was one thing, but putting a brother in therapy for one instance of hair-pulling? Scarlett was harsh. I didn't have any siblings, but I couldn't imagine doing something as terrible as making a bunch of toys attack them for even a week. One night, maybe. But not _six_ years!

The elimination wasn't too bad. No one from our team left, after all. In place of our team's elimination was the winner dinner, a really nice-looking spread from Darwin's Food Safari.

"However, we need to even the teams up." Chris said. "As I remember it, Team Maskwak at least made it out of the cave first."

Scarlett spoke up. "Excuse me, but Max and I showed up at the same time as Julie. It should be equal."

Chris shrugged. "Yeah...no. I reviewed the footage and Julie was a few steps ahead of you two. So _technically,_ Team Maskwak would have won the challenge. So they get the penalty of not getting the dinner, and Team Kinosewak is the only one eliminating a player this evening."

We all had to watch as Chris read the votes. He threw marshmallows to Jasmine, Scarlett, and Sammy.

"And tonight's loser is..." Chris paused. Amy was starting to look worried, while Max looked even more nervous.

"Amy!" Max got his marshmallow.

Amy got to her feet. "How could you all vote for me?" she exclaimed. "I was just as much use as any of you! Jasmine did a lot worse than me in today's challenge!"

Interesting – this time she wasn't putting the blame on Sammy. That had to be a good sign.

But there was no way Amy could get out of this one. She was going, going, gone.

"Bye, sis!" Sammy called happily. "Hey, if I win, I might even split the money with you!"

"Don't bother, Samey." Amy called back in a bitter tone. "I wouldn't have given you any of my million – just don't expect me to be nice to you all the time!"

I spoke to Sammy after her sister was fired. "Did she say she was being nice to you?"

Sammy smiled. "Sort of. She's not being nice as much as not picking on me. She doesn't really talk to me or about me at all any more. It's all I can do to hope she actually gets to a point where she is nice, like when we were younger. Things sort of became how they were when we were about eight – I don't know what happened-"

"Okay, I get the point." I interrupted her. "If I wanted to hear your life story, I would've asked."

"Samey, Julie, stop talking! For a while." Chris snapped. "You'll have plenty of time after this. You see, it's become obvious that a certain couple is well on their way to Smooch City. I think we all know who I'm talking about."

Everyone exchanged confused glances. Chris ignored every look. "This kind of lip-locked alliance is unfair to the other team members. It's also kind of awkward. So I've decided to split them up! So without further ado, I'm breaking up...Max and Scarlett!"

Both looked shocked, and Scarlett actually started to protest the idea of them being a couple. Personally, I think Chris knew perfectly well that there wasn't anything like that between them and he was just bored with the teams as they were. He basically just switched me out with Max.

So now I was on Team Kinosewak. It was kind of sad to say goodbye to my team. Shawn and Sky were both great, and I didn't like having to leave them. But it was hardest to say goodbye to Ella.

"We'll hang out again once the merge happens, right?" I whispered to her. "I'm sorry we won't be teammates."

"Me too." Ella sniffled. "I'll miss you, though. Hope your new team brings you happiness, too."

And I followed my new all-girl team back to their treehouse. "So," I said to Sammy. "About that life story. I'm curious. You were saying how you and Amy used to be close?"

 **This is literally the first time Julie's been on a team with someone she's not sure she knows. Sammy and Jasmine are great. She's not so sure about Scarlett.**

 **Oh, and by the way, about Chris' joke about Jasmine being on Australian time...I'm pretty sure they're ahead of Canada, as they're two hours behind NZers and we're ahead of America by at least six hours (not sure exactly, but we got an extra afternoon in Hawaii then I missed most of Tuesday on the way back).**


	10. Chapter 10

**Finally, the last pre-merge episode. I gotta say, I'm looking forward to getting there. Er...even if it means I have to get rid of more people I like. The next two eliminations will both be girls, so don't worry, I'm going to try to even up the gender ratio. Thanks for reviewing, PokemonFTW, Nicky Haugh, Gage the Hedgehog, Bloodylilcorpse, OmniPlanckInstant, SuperKitty4789, Joel Connell, Great Idea Alert and SilentSinger948.**

When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I saw was a pair of green eyes, staring at me through glasses.

I sat up abruptly. "Scarlett? What...what are you doing?"

"Sorry if I startled you." Scarlett said absentmindedly, scribbling something on a pad. She then proceeded to say something I could barely understand, but I gathered that she'd been monitoring the way I was sleeping. Eventually, she clarified "Your sleep was rather fitful." She left the treehouse, as the rest of my teammates came in.

"Scarlett's OK." Jasmine assured me. "A little weird, but harmless."

"Don't bet on it." I muttered under my breath, remembering the confessional I'd heard the previous day.

"Want some fruit?" Sammy offered, holding out some berries for me.

"Thanks." I smiled, taking it. The two of them had gotten quite a haul of fruit. "How do you two get so much?"

"Oh, Jasmine always seems to be able to find the right places." Sammy explained. "I'm starting to get the hang of it, too."

That reminded me of something I was meaning to find out. "Did you see Shawn this morning?" I asked innocently. "He's usually up around this time."

Jasmine's skin was mostly too dark to show a blush, but the tips of her ears were light enough to go a bit pink. "Yeah, he was up." she said, her voice clearly struggling to stay casual. "We usually see him."

"And I usually give them a little _alone_ time." Sammy chuckled, and what blush I could see on Jasmine intensified.

Well, that was enough for me. "Actually, from being on the other team, I think I can give you some good news, Jasmine." I offered. "Shawn really likes you. Has he said anything?"

Jasmine shook her head.

"He's worried about it." I explained. "He thinks if he starts a relationship with you, he'll be distracted from his whole surviving-the-zombie-apocalypse thing. Just...keep that in mind."

Jasmine's expresson was torn. I could read it completely. She was happy that Shawn was into her, but didn't want to let it distract her. I'd seen the same expression on Courtney's face, on Heather's face, even on Gwen's face. I remembered watching the show and seeing them try to fight their feelings for the sake of the game. Gwen was usually all good with it, and Heather was able to put the game before her feelings, but Courtney was hopeless, ruled by her emotions.

I wasn't sure where Jasmine would be on there. She was about as focused as anyone, but after her performance in the X challenge, I wasn't sure what would happen. Well, at least, she probably would be fine as long as she and Shawn didn't end up going head-to-head the way they did that time.

There was the sound of an air-horn from the intercom outside. "Attention, my soon-to-be victims! Your pain awaits at the grand clearing! Last one there eats a rotten egg!"

I gulped. I just hoped that didn't mean an eating challenge was in store after that. There was one every season – the Brunch of Disgustingness, that prison challenge that made Lindsay barf, the Chinese one where Alejandro kept slipping everything he got to Courtney, that time the final four had to make their own food, and I was betting All-Stars had something too.

Luckily, Max was actually lagging behind my old team, so he got it. Sammy wasn't as fast as the rest of our team, either (even Scarlett was quicker than you'd expect), but she wasn't that slow. As for me? I beat Jasmine to the clearing by about half a second. I had my track training to thank for that.

Okay, so Max struggled through the egg. It nearly brought my fruit back up.

Our challenge was a race through the island. We'd go through three zones with one similarity – being quiet was super important. First, we had to walk through a bunch of sleeping lions and rattlesnakes.

Jasmine pointed out that rattlesnakes were deadly, but Chris told us that the poison in our rattlesnakes had been modified. "So you'll only feel like you're gonna die."

The second zone was simple. Make a sound, and a blindfolded Chef would fire his pasta gun at the sound. If that happened, his pasta would likely pin the poor sucker to the nearest hard object, and they'd attract a pasta-loving bear (what is _with_ bears in this show?).

Lastly, there was a freezing avalanche zone. Yeah...self-explanatory. At least we didn't have Tyler here this season to scream out a "YES!" when his girlfriend finally recognized him.

And to make things worse, Chris wanted us to carry some random baby through the whole course. We didn't even know where they came from. But yeah, we had to carry it.

Max scowled as he caught his one. "Evil doesn't change soiled nappies." His baby burst into tears.

Chris put a finger to his lips. "Sssh! They're sleeping. You wake a lion up with a crying baby, and it's not gonna be a party!"

Turned out Max wasn't quite as aloof as he pretended. He rocked his baby, cooing "There there, baby-waby! Stay sleeping-weeping for Max-y!" And the kid closed its eyes and went all smiley.

Okay, so Max wasn't evil. Duh! But there was no way I'd suspect him to be a baby-whisperer. When I giggled, the guy cleared his throat and said "I mean...prepare to evil, tiny minion!"

"Prepare for trouble and make it double." I muttered with another giggle, just loud enough for him to hear. Max scowled at me.

"And..." Chris pressed the air horn so it just made a tiny sound, "...go!"

Jasmine had a plan for our team. It was a good one, I'll admit. "We maintain a lead on them, then wake up the danger we've already passed, then let them deal with the lions."

"Sounds good." Scarlett said simply.

"I'm in." Sammy added.

I stole a look towards Team Maskwak. I didn't want them to get hurt. Well, Max, maybe. But Sky, Shawn and Ella were people I'd developed liking for. Then again, Sky and Shawn could handle themselves. I paused.

Then I remembered Ella's magical singing voice. Yeah, she could handle a lion.

"Sure." I shrugged. "That works."

And after one thrown stone, a rattlesnake attacked Max. Of course, Sky pulled it off him quickly enough, but his baby woke up in all the commotion. That gave me another chance to see him trying to soothe it, while half-paralyzed.

"Let's go!" Jasmine said to the rest of our team, and we all obediently went forward.

But when we were nearly out of the first zone, as luck would have it, my baby woke and started crying.

"Please tell me it's not diaper-changing time!" I groaned.

Okay, it wasn't. The baby was either hungry or woke up for some other reason. But whatever reason, it woke the last lion in the zone.

"Should we run for it?" I whispered.

"No, stay!" Scarlett said. "Julie, catch!" She threw her baby to me, leapt onto Jasmine's shoulders, and waved her arms around, roaring...and when Jasmine ran forward, it seemed that it was working. The lion backed off.

"Wow." I stared at them. "That was awesome."

Sammy grinned and nodded. "Trust me, Julie, you haven't seen the half of it."

We found someone waiting for us at the start of Zone 2. "Wha...how did you beat us?" Jasmine said in disbelief.

"Sleeping cats and oversized poisonous worms with fangs are nothing compared to the zombie apocalypse." Shawn said. He seemed more relaxed than usual, actually. And at that second, he kept his eyes locked on Jasmine, smiling. "I'm glad to see you made it, not that I doubted."

As for Jasmine, she blushed again. "Um...thanks." she managed.

You know something? Talk about a boring challenge! That little flirtatious remark from Shawn and Jasmine's shy response is, to this day, the last thing I remember about doing the challenge (of course I saw the episode later on, but I truly barely remembered between then and the end). Well, up until Team Maskwak beat us to the finish line.

Oh wait, there was one thing. We had to hand in our babies at the start of the third zone, since the lawyers had called about it. Max had insisted he'd handed in his baby, but after the challenge ended, Chris said "Before we go any further – Max, we need the baby back." Turned out he'd given them a log.

"What?" Max shrugged in fake ignorance. "You think...why would I-" Then we heard a muffled giggle. There was something moving around Max's back. He tried to play it off, though. "What, this? It's...an evil hump. An evil, giggling hump. I-" And then the baby popped out.

But I was too depressed to laugh. We had to vote someone off.

I had thought about the team. I liked everyone on there. Sammy was sweet, Jasmine was a great leader, and Scarlett, although I was a little afraid of her, was way too smart to ditch.

That meant I only had one person that our team could afford to lose.

That night, Chris gave Jasmine, Scarlett and I our marshmallows pretty unceremoniously. "And," he said, "I am ...less ecstatic than I thought I would be to announce that Samey is taking the Cannon of Shame!"

Sammy looked a bit upset, but she stood up, her face dignified. "First of all, I just want you all to know I voted for myself. I got what I wanted out of this show – I never really wanted to win. Anyway, I'll say my final words before I get in the cannon." she declared forcefully, and looked Chris in the eye. "My name is _Sammy._ People can call me Samey all they want, but it will never be my real name. I'm not just a twin. I'm my own person. And I'm nothing like Amy."

I gave her a hug. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear from you, girl, straight from the day I yelled at you for not doing just that. Sorry you had to leave so soon, but...you know, had to vote someone off."

Sammy gave her sweet smile. "Like I said, I voted for myself, too. You, Jas and Scarlett deserve to go further, anyway. I'm just glad to have proved that I'm strong enough to outlast Amy."

I wasn't exactly happy or unhappy to see Sammy go. I didn't really care that much, to be honest. Sammy was OK, but despite liking her, we weren't really friends, were we?

 **Yeah, Sammy's gone. I wanted her to leave after Amy, but with her twin gone, she had no more plot left. I realize that, aside from Ella being here and Sugar and Dave not, the final seven are pretty similar to canon. But I'm betting that you won't be able to guess who's leaving next!**

 **Yeah, and Julie made a really old _Pokemon_ reference.**


	11. Chapter 11

**I know a ton of people hate this episode. Well, guess what? Julie hates it too! Also, think I sort of changed the rules by having those who were out allowed to tag people, but...whatever. Thanks for reviewing, SuperKitty4789, OmniPlanckInstant, SilentSinger948, Bloodylilcorpse, Gage the Hedgehog, Liz the Sweet Writer (well, you'll just have to wait and see) and Pokemon FTW.**

Tough luck getting a proper amount of sleep on the island! Chris didn't give us a challenge the next day, making out that it was a free day. I guess with thirteen episodes and two weeks, we needed a free day somewhere.

It also meant I got to hang out with my old teammates as well as my new. I had breakfast with Jasmine and Scarlett, then spent the rest of the day hanging out with Ella.

"How is it, being on a team with Max?" I asked.

"Oh, he's all right." Ella said happily. "He's a softie, deep down."

"Just be careful." I warned her. "I don't want you to repeat the Sugar situation. If he seems annoyed, back off."

"Don't worry, I've learned to watch for the signs." Ella smiled. "I was so sure I could work out my problems with Sugar, I was blind to seeing that she didn't want to work out the problems. I won't make that mistake again." She looked a little sad. "I don't really know how to deal with people who don't like me."

She looked so forlorn that I had to give her a hug. "Cheer up, girl! You just avoid them. Not everyone likes me, either. And besides, you have plenty of people who _do_ like you. I like you. Sky likes you. Shawn probably likes you – he just doesn't like to get too close to people. And I'm sure if Jasmine and Scarlett got to know you, they would like you too. And although I know Dave wasn't in love with you, I'm sure he liked you as a friend."

Ella brightened up, and returned my hug. "Thank you, Julie! That makes me feel so much better."

I smiled. "Hey, did you ever watch that old sitcom _Friends_? I started thinking about what friends are for, and the theme song came to mind."

"Oh, I loved that theme tune!" Ella smiled. She began singing " _So no one told you life was gonna be this way..."_

I joined in. " _Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's DOA..."_

We sang the whole song together, but eventually got the giggles in the last chorus.

So yeah, it was a free day. But not a free night.

We were woken up in the middle of the night by Chris' infamous air horn.

"Psych!" yelled the loudspeaker. I heard an "Ow!" from Jasmine, who was sleeping on a branch above the treehouse. "You already _are_ on a dangerous island! Meeting area, now!"

Everyone was groaning and bleary-eyed as they got to the meeting area. Most of us had had almost zero sleep. I mean, it was only my third night in an actual bed.

"What is so important that it required waking us in the middle of the night?" Max asked, his voice almost lifeless.

"Cognitive function is dependent on REM sleep!" Scarlett complained.

"Can we go back to bed now?" Shawn yawned.

As it was, Chris had called us here for a...well, sort of...important reason. "It's time to merge the teams. Consider yourself merged!"

"And that couldn't have waited until the morning?" Jasmine demanded.

"I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason why we needed to hear this now!" Ella chirped. There were dark circles under her eyes, but she determinedly kept smiling.

"As a matter of fact, you're absolutely right, Ella!" Chris said, with that smug grin that made me unable to trust him any further than I could throw Chef. And considering I wouldn't be able to budge him...yeah. "But if you guys don't want the midnight merger meal, then fine, go back to bed."

"You've never done anything nice, ever!" Sky accused. "What gives?"

The lawyers, apparently. They'd been mad that the only team who got food was the winning team. So this time, we all got to eat.

"It was gonna be gourmet pizzas, bison burgers and sweet potato fries," Chris said as he showed us the swanky set-up, "But the silk tablecloth and the silver candelabras put us way over budget, so, tonight, you'll be eating..." He gestured to a tray with a cover, which Chef took off to reveal seven bubbling mugs. "Juggy Chunks!"

We all gasped. I even gagged. That stuff looked disgusting – bubbly green-brown stew. And I swear, the minute Chef whipped the cover off, I caught the stench of rotted flesh or something (I thought I better not mention that to Shawn, though).

Then it turned out the meal merger was just a pre-challenge, anyway. Whoever finished their mug first won immunity.

"Everyone, grab some chunks!"

Everyone was hesitant to begin. The first was Sky, in the end, who held her nose and took a gulp. Then, I took a sip, and immediately spat it out.

"Screw immunity! I eat that stuff, I'm gonna _blow_ chunks."

But no one else seemed to have that problem. Everyone else tried to finish their mug first, some shuddering or screwing up their faces at the taste.

Scarlett started off taking it slowly, but Chris saw her. "You're never gonna get immunity like that, Scarlett." he informed her. Then she picked up her mug and started gulping properly.

But she didn't finish first. "Ugggh...finished!" Sky called out.

"Sky wins the pre-challenge and immunity!" Chris exclaimed. Then he explained the next challenge – basically Hide-and-Seek. We'd all get ten minutes to hide before Sky came looking for us. Anyone she found and tagged could tag someone else. Those who weren't tagged got immunity.

I took Ella with me for the game. She was my friend, after all, and her face was getting paler by the second.

"How are you feeling?" I asked after a couple of minutes of running.

"A bit ill." Ella whimpered. "Not too awful, I guess. How are you?"

"I'm fine." I shrugged. "But then I only had one mouthful of that disgusting thing. How much did you finish?"

"About three-quarters." Ella admitted. She let out a little groan, and we kept walking. We had to find a safe hiding spot before Sky came, and I had a feeling Ella wouldn't be able to go too much further.

As we walked, Ella began humming, and then singing again. Her voice was softer than usual, and her song lyrics was also surprising. " _Dead is the new alive...despair's the new survival, a pointless point of view..."_

"Never heard you sing that kind of music before." I remarked.

"Well, maybe I just wanted to do something different!"

I was totally taken aback by Ella's tone. Her eyes flashed and she sounded totally aggressive. She'd never spoken to anyone on the island that way.

"Hey, chill!" I said, holding my hands up defensively. "I don't mean I don't like it, I'm just surprised that you'd sing something like that."

"I sing what I feel like!" Ella said fiercely. "Why shouldn't I?"

I paused. "Okay, so I'm guessing you don't want me around at the moment." I said. "How about we split up? I'll help you find a hiding spot, and then go and find my own?"

It took a couple more minutes to find Ella a good hiding spot. Then I decided to climb a tree. That would be my best chance of getting a good view of the island, and so I might see if Sky was coming close.

It was no good, though. Sky ended up finding both Ella and I. She already had Scarlett and Max following her, so it looked as if it was all up to Shawn and Jasmine.

It wasn't just Ella who had gone pale and ill. Sky and Scarlett weren't much better, and Max was so sick that he had to be dragged along.

We found Jasmine just before sunrise, but she managed to run away. We were just passing under a tree, when we heard another voice.

"Jasmine, I'm coming to save you!"

Shawn appeared from almost out of nowhere, and attemped to pick Jasmine up, but failed. We were a way away, but I heard Jasmine say "I can't run any more! Leave me here!"

"I won't leave you! Not ever!" Shawn declared. "Maybe you can't run, but you can climb!"

It was only when they'd both started climbing when I heard another call from Shawn. "Julie! You're not one of them yet! Climb up here – it's safest! They can't climb!"

I didn't know what he was talking about, but why not? I mean, I could tag him and/or Jasmine, right?

Well, in fact, Jasmine was the only one I managed to tag. Then the sun rose before anyone could reach Shawn, and he gained immunity, while everyone else headed back to camp to have their stomachs pumped.

I walked back with Shawn, who I now noticed didn't look sick. "Did you skip the meal, too?" I asked.

"Yeah." Shawn admitted. "Even immunity wasn't worth inevitable food poisoning. I heard Chef saying that the stuff expired in the 70s!"

"So why did you want me to climb up? When I'd clearly been caught?" I asked.

Shawn scowled. "You want me to be honest? Well...I thought everyone else was a zombie. But I could tell you hadn't been infected, because you looked normal. I didn't know you were there as part of the game!"

I shrugged. "Well, you got immunity out of it. Sorry I tagged your girlfriend, though."

Shawn looked a bit nervous when I said that, and I laughed and told him "Trust me, spending just a couple of days on Jasmine's team told me a lot about her, and she likes you, too. And considering that you were prepared to rescue her from a zombie horde, I think she'll know that coming from you, it counts for a lot."

And it was true. That same night, Jasmine thanked Shawn for attempting to save her.

"I'm sorry I didn't, though." Shawn said.

"But you tried." Jasmine pointed out. "I get what you thought, and that makes it even more sweet." Then she kissed the conspiracy nut on the cheek.

All I can say is, after who I voted for, it was a good thing Shawn and Jasmine managed to get in a kiss before elimination.

Six of us got marshmallows. Sky and Shawn were safe, of course. Scarlett and Max both got them. I got the fifth marshmallow, and the last one went to...

Ella.

Yeah, I'd voted for Jasmine. And it looked like some of the others had thought the same way – it was the merge, and Jasmine was a major physical threat – in fact, the only threat who wasn't safe. Well, unless you counted me – but I was a runner, not physically strong or a great climber/gymnast.

And yet, as Jasmine was eliminated, it seemed she was the luckiest of all of us. She wasn't there to become terrified of the weather suddenly going haywire.

 **Yeah, you all know what's coming next. Wondering who Julie will team up with? Oh, BTW, I know only Sky should've been able to tag people, but I changed it to be like Manhunt in order to take Jasmine out...big apology to Jasmine fans, I love her too, but this just wasn't her story.**


	12. Chapter 12

**Right. Let's save the island from obliteration! Thanks for reviewing, Gage the Hedgehog, OmniPlanckInstant, SuperKitty4789, SilentSinger948 and Bloodylilcorpse.**

Even though dawn had been long ago, the island was still dark. And as a matter of fact, that wasn't the only weird thing about the weather.

"Uh, guys?" I said. "I think we're in the middle of a natural disaster. Maybe a hurricane."

"No, a _typhoon_!" Sky cried.

"No, it's a volcano!" Shawn exclaimed. He was right. Right in front of us, a volcano appeared, and out of it came...sprinkles?

Okay, at least that wasn't dangerous. But there was something very weird going on here.

"What's afoot here?" Max questioned. "I demand the host narrate an explanation!"

Chris was pressing a button on a remote repeatedly. "No idea what you're talking about. Just need a minute...to..."

But we weren't going to take this bullshit. I folded my arms. "Chris McLean, you've put us through a ton of crazy challenges, picked on us, electrocuted us, and even poisoned us. At the least, we deserve an explanation as to what's going on!"

I remembered Jasmine saying that the scenery had changed on the island. I'd dismissed it at the time, but with a volcano coming up before our eyes, and this strange weather, maybe she'd been on to something.

But Chris didn't explain to us until several Christmas trees, complete with decorations, came up behind him. Then he admitted "The island's mostly artificial."

Wow. Didn't see that one coming.

"Yes, gasp! And we're having some technical difficulties, okay? It's nothing to worry about!"

That's when a screen came up, saying that the island was going to self-destruct in an hour. And what did Chris do? Make it our next challenge to find the control room and shut the self-destruct down in three teams of two (there were three ways down). The team to disarm the self-destruct got immunity. Meanwhile, he and Chef would take a helicopter far enough so they'd survive. He showed us on an iPad.

Scarlett took one look at the iPad and gave a gasp. "Can I see that?"

"Sure." Chris shrugged, handing it over. Whoa, he must've liked her a lot to trust her with that thing.

I wished I had time to make a confessional and sort out my fears and feelings as Chris left. But I didn't, so I just went with my gut.

If it had been a harmless challenge (so to speak), I would've teamed up with Ella, as usual. But since I was thinking about my safety, I needed someone stronger by my side. I mouthed a 'sorry' at Ella and turned to the most agile person on the island. "Shawn, be my teammate?"

Shawn shrugged. "Sure. Okay."

So we ran off together. Scarlett and Max had already disappeared, so Sky and Ella were left as the last team.

To be fair, I think I slowed Shawn down a little. I was quick, but he was better at all the athletic stuff we had to do. Still, we made good time in getting to the control room, even though we were underwater and had to get rid of a shark before we could get down to the right level.

As we passed a monitor, it flashed on to show Chris. "Guys, glad I caught you! I have good news!"

"You just found out you have a terminal illness and will die soon? Or you disabled the self-destruct from the helicopter? Even better, you disabled the self destruct after you found out you have a terminal illness?" I suggested in a heavily sarcastic tone.

"No, I said _good_ news. I can download all the footage from the cameras to the helicopter, so, even after the island blows up, I can still cut together an episode!"

"If the island blows up, that'll be the end of the show." I informed him. "French _Survivor_ got cancelled because someone died on there. You think you have problems, well, when the show ends, you'll know what you thought were problems were nothing, compared to us."

"You think you've got it hard?" Chris scowled. "The cappucino machine thing on here is terrible."

The last thing Chris told us about was about not setting off the security. There were lasers everywhere, and even worse, we ended up getting killer robot animals chasing after us. And it was all my fault – I felt awful. There was Shawn, dodging the lasers well because he had that security system at home (zombie protection again), and me, feeling the klutziest I'd ever felt.

After we got away from the animals, I apologized. "I feel like I'm letting you down." I confesssed. "I'm sorry, Shawn. But I guess that means, if it gets to that point, I won't fault you for leaving me on my own if only one of us can get out of here."

Shawn didn't look too stressed. "I get why," he admitted. "But don't think I won't take you up on that."

Less than fifteen minutes to self-destruct, we ran into Ella and Sky. Ella was starting to look scared by this point. "We've had a lot of problems." she said in a trembly voice. "And we can't find the control-"

At that moment, a monitor came down. It only showed soundwaves, but we could hear the voice coming from it.

"Guys, I'm so glad I found you." It was Scarlett. "I'm in the control room, but you can't shut down the self-destruct from here! Chris was lying."

The rest of the group believed her. "Typical." Sky huffed.

The monitor showed a map and arrow. "You can only shut it down here." Scarlett's voice said.

Oh yeah. You know where that map led us? Into a room full of Chris robots.

"Hope you like it." Scarlett's voice said as the door slammed behind us. Her voice was changing. She'd sounded nerdy before, but pleasant. As she said the next words, her voice was harsh and threatening. "It's the last thing you'll ever see!" she exclaimed wickedly.

And the Chris robots came to life. All of them were coming towards us with outstretched hands, chanting _"_ Total...Drama..." Coming to...kill us?

That gave me the idea. There was only one way we might be able to get out alive. And I'd need to do a tiny bit of manipulation. It was a long shot, but it might just work.

"It's like this huge horde of zombies!" I cried.

"Z...z...ZOMBIES!" And with that, Shawn sprang into action. He destroyed every single robot.

The last we heard of it was one of them shutting down as it said " _Total...total...total..."_

Chris got back in contact with us after the massacre, and he was furious. It turned out that the several Chrisbots were promo robots. "How do you think I did the promotions for the show? You think I went to all those malls myself?"

"Well, why were they trying to attack us?" I demanded.

"They gotta defend themselves! Do you know what the average Total Drama fan is like? Do you?!"

"I'm pretty sure they can't all be Sierra clones." I had to say it, remembering the stalking superfan who made it onto the show. She actually liked Chris until he left her in Drumheller (she only got out because Cody felt too guilty about leaving her).

But even though Chris was mad at us, was at least clear-minded enough to let us know what was going on – well, at least, after Max ran in, chased by a robot (Shawn just threw one of the Chrisbot arms at it to get it to stop working). Oh well, at least the robot broke the locked door. We could get out.

Then Chris told us "Scarlett has taken control of the island and is going to kill everyone if I don't give her the million. Side note: I am not giving her the million."

Okay, so I knew Scarlett wasn't as innocent as she looked. But I had not expected her to set robots on us and threaten to let the island explode if Chris didn't give her the prize money. What was she planning to do with it?

We went back to find the control room. That was pretty easy, but we were running out of time, and the room was locked. Sky rapped on the door. "Scarlett, please, don't do-"

A monitor came down, this time showing Scarlett. I'm surprised I recognized her, actually – her glasses were gone, and her hair flew out in spikes. "Attention, vermin!" she said in her new voice. "Either Chris brings me the money or everyone gets eliminated – _permanently_! You have-"

"Four minutes, and counting." a mechanical voice interrupted her.

"That is all." Scarlett finished, and the screen flashed off.

We tried to get back through to Chris, but he still refused to help us. "You all signed a release."

The five of us exchanged looks. "I have an idea!" Max exclaimed. "Quick, someone think of something!"

I folded my arms. "I thought you said you had an idea?"

"That _is_ my idea!"

"For someone else to have an idea?" I said in disbelief.

"We need to do something!" Ella said, her face full of concern and fear. "Usually when I'm feeling scared, I sing...but I don't think that will help us now."

"What can we do?" Sky wondered out loud. "Chris isn't coming. No Chris means..." she gasped, and ran back to the room full of Chrisbots.

I looked around. "Does anyone else know what she's thinking?" Well, it was pretty clear once she brought back a Chrisbot head.

Max held up the Chris head. Luckily, it still talked in Chris' voice, so Scarlett was pretty much fooled. She opened the door, and in ran Max. "Ha! I tricked you! _Now_ who's more evil?"

Scarlett's eyes narrowed, and she started towards Max, looking as if she was about to tear him apart. I quickly launched myself at her. "Guys, a little help!" I called. Ella quickly tried to help me pin the psychopath to the ground as Sky ran to the controls. We had less than a minute left.

"What do I push?" she asked.

"Try Task Manager!" I called out. "That usually shuts off things that won't shut off otherwise!"

So Sky pressed Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and the screen changed. "Self-destruct terminated." said the computer. Scarlett groaned quietly.

Finally, Chris came back onto the screen. "Guys, before you die, I just wanted to say that – oh! Whoa, you took down Scarlett! Nice! Way better than dying, am I right?"

Between the five of us, we managed to hold her down long enough to get her tied up. Maybe she was smart, but she wasn't Houdini.

And of course, she was in the cannon that night. Chris was back, marshmallows and all. "I know I usually give these to people who are staying." he said, "But tonight calls for a special occasion." He started throwing them at Scarlett. "You are so eliminated. You're more eliminated than anyone on this show has ever been eliminated before. Even that wizard guy! The whole island's a freak show!"

"Yes, away with her!" Max added. "It's a shabby sidekick that tries to usurp her master. I am the only true evil on this island, and soon it will be mine!" He let out an evil laugh.

"Yeah, I'm done with evil for now. " Chris said, nodding to Chef.

Max was thrown into the cannon in mid-laugh. "Inconceivable!" Then he was gagged with the marshmallows.

"No, please!" Scarlett begged. "Don't send me away with him! Anyone but – HIM!" she screamed the last word as both of them were fired away.

I made a confessional after that. "Too bad Chris didn't say he was done with _being_ evil. Still, I can't believe Scarlett! I mean, _seriously._ "

Now that the teams were merged, we all slept in the treehouse, but it took a while to fall asleep. It still didn't feel quite real, that I'd made the final four. And if I had predicted at the end of last week, I would've thought Jasmine would still be here. Then again, I would never have been able to predict Chris McLean. Or Scarlett, for that matter.

 **The most iconic episode of the season is over and done with! Now to go to...another episode.**


	13. Chapter 13

**Okay, okay, worst episode of the season. Hopefully I'll improve it. Thanks for reviewing, Nicky Haugh, SilentSinger948, OmniPlanckInstant, Bloodylilcorpse, SuperKitty4789, PokemonFTW and Gage the Hedgehog.**

Ella was pretty upset with me, the next morning. "Why did you team up with Shawn instead of me? I thought we were friends!"

We were in the treehouse at the time. Ella and I kept our voices down, since Sky was still asleep, but Shawn was probably still in his tree, or foraging. The sun was just rising.

"We are, El," I said gently, "But I'm friends with Shawn, too. His girlfriend had just been kicked off. I figured he needed me more, and I knew Sky would stick with you."

I did feel bad about ditching Ella for Shawn, truth be told. I'd felt pretty guilty already, but that look Ella gave me was just making me feel worse. She looked as if she was about to cry – well, actually, tears were falling. I knew I shouldn't have ditched her, but it was life or death.

"I swear," I said truthfully, "If you give me another chance, I won't ever leave you behind again. Not unless you tell me to."

Ella sniffled a bit, then managed a small smile. "I know I should forgive you." she said finally. "I still want to be your friend. But you need to keep to your word. You promise?"

I raised a hand. "Cross my heart promise. Drop down dead if I tell a lie!"

Ella giggled. As it happened, I saw Sky open her eyes, looking skeptical, and then closing them again.

I gave a sigh. "Sky, I know you're awake. Don't pretend you haven't been listening."

Sky properly opened her eyes and sat up. "I'm just concerned." she said. "Julie...I know you want to win, but I get the feeling there's a way you're playing that-"

"It's none of your business how I play this game, Sky." I told her straight. "I know you hate cheating, but that's not what I'm doing. I don't force anyone to do anything. You're here to win. So am I. As long as I'm not cheating, what's your problem?"

Sky tilted her head to the side, staring at me. Then she spoke. "All right. I'm sorry. You're right."

Ella smiled. "We're all friends here, right? No hard feelings between us if we don't win."

I nodded, but I knew deep down that Sky wasn't being completely truthful. I had a feeling she'd be watching me very closely through the next three days.

Well, there wouldn't be anything for her to see. It was the final four. I'd promised not to ditch Ella again, and I didn't think there was any way I _could_ do anything to either of the others. Besides, I genuinely liked everyone who was left.

After that, I went out to forage, just in case Shawn didn't get to the treehouse in time.

The intercom screeched to life. "Sorry about that. Seems like every time I press this button..." The intercom screeched again. "Yeah, it's definitely this button. Anyway, time to join me at the base of Mt McLean. I just named the mountain. Named it after me, McLean, you know? Cause I'm awesome? Anyway, just get on over here, pronto!"

I got to the mountain first. "You are _so_ losing your touch, Chris." I told the host. "I liked the names of places better when it was a doom and gloom name. Like Mt Looming Tragedy. Or the Bay of Dismay – that was an awesome one. I somehow don't think this mountain's gonna be awesome."

Chris' face was great to look at as I spoke. He was clearly mad that I said he was losing his touch, but I think he liked that I actually had some admiration for the "I'm totally scary" names he labelled the regions of Wawanakwa with (after last episode's fiasco, I almost wished it was still above the water).

Shawn, Ella and Sky didn't take too long to show up.

"Congratulations." Chris said to all of us. "You should be very proud of yourselves for making it to the final four. Proud – and utterly terrified of what awaits you."

"Is the island gonna try and kill us again?" Shawn said snarkily.

"Nope. The island is now completely offline, thanks to two people whose names I never want to hear again."

"Why are you blaming Max?" I asked, deciding this would be the perfect time to annoy Chris. "The person to blame for everyone nearly dying was...Scarlett-Scarlett-Scarlett-Scarlett-Scarl-"

Chris shut me up with his airhorn, then got on to explaining the challenge. Basically, all we had to do was get to the top of the mountain. And we even got backpacks and hats, which was a step up from last season. Huh, probably it was more dangerous than anything last season. Anyway, first to the top and to get the flag got takeout. Last to the top got eliminated.

Hm, easy. All I needed to do was not be fourth. The semifinals would be bound to be another last-one-loses challenge, based on the one in Revenge of the Island – plus it happened in Island and World Tour (although Cody and Alejandro ended up tying). That or the winner would choose who to hurl. Okay, in that case, I had to hope I could beat Sky. I knew Ella would take me to the finale, and I didn't know about Shawn, but if Sky made the semifinals then won that challenge too, I knew she wouldn't pick me.

But, as I reminded myself, I promised not to leave Ella behind unless she wanted me to. I'd have to make sure both of us made it to the top alive.

Chris gave us climbing gear, and we all ran for it. Of course, Shawn was ahead of us, with Sky not far behind. Although I could've passed Sky easily, I ran level with Ella.

"Come on!" I said impatiently. "You can run faster than this! Imagine that we're going to Disneyland or something! Even better, Berry Knotts Farm or Universal Studios!"

Ella sped up a little, but it wasn't really enough.

It was another boring challenge. I blanked most of it out. Of course, Chris set mechanical crocodiles on us, and then we had to jump greasy hoodoos, AND had to duck a swinging log.

We also had to bypass a cave full of sleeping bears that acted as a shortcut, but even though Chris chose that moment to yell through a monitor at us and wake them, that was no problem. I'd been doing most of the work at that point, but Ella came through at the vital moment, and sang them to passiveness.

Wouldn't you know it, Sky and Shawn beat both of us to the top. At 50 metres short of the top, I stopped for a moment. Ella stopped with me.

"One of us has to be third, and one of us has to be last." I said. "I know I promised not to ditch you again, but..."

Ella's gaze flickered around, and then she said "...every player for herself?" Then she smiled. "May the best girl win?"

I smiled back. And then I ran. Ella ran too, but my track training gave me the edge. I beat Ella to the top, with seconds to spare. Chris happily announced that Ella was going home. And I mean happily, like "And finally, the most annoying contestant on this show is getting the cannon!" Which, afterwards, I wish I had disputed.

I spent the afternoon with Ella. She tried to take her impending elimination bravely, but I could see she was really upset about it. "Stay in touch, okay?" I said. "I've really had fun hanging out with you this past week. We should hang out again sometime after the show. My family would love you – they'd think you were a good influence on me!"

Ella managed a smile. "I've had fun, too. I didn't really come on Total Drama for the money. I just thought it might be a good experience, and a way to make some friends. I figured if I did get the money, I'd split it with everyone like Cameron did on Revenge of the Island, then use my share to take my family to a resort. My parents work so hard and I think they need a holiday."

"Where would you go?" I asked. "Anywhere special?"

"I was thinking Florida." Ella answered. "It's so sunny and beautiful there. Or San Diego. What were you going to do with the money?"  
I shrugged. "Make like I'm going to use it to leave my family unless they let me follow whatever religion I want without giving me grief. They're reasonable enough to give in. Then...well, I don't know. Save a bit, shop with another, and probably spend the rest on a holiday, too. But I'd like to go to Australia." Okay, so sue me, meeting Jasmine could have influenced me a bit on that, but I'd always wanted to see echidnas and koalas. And it was sunny, right?

I said as much to Ella. "I don't know if I'd like to go right into the outback, but there's plenty of fun things to do. I thought about going to that one state – Queen something. I've heard it being called the Sunshine State. I mean, there's another one called the Garden State – not my thing."

"I think that sounds peaceful." Ella predictably said. "But I think you mean Victoria. But it gets cold in the winter, anyway, so it's probably not the right state. But you'd have to go to Queensland during our summer, because it's their winter and it's too hot to go out in their summer."

"How do you know?" I asked in surprise. "And how do you know it's Queens _land_?"

"My parents went there once, before I was born." Ella shrugged. "I heard about the heat. But it's supposed to be beautiful there, with lots of wildlife! Beautiful birds, and bats, and probably some wild wallabies and platypuses! Anyway, something else about my being eliminated." She grinned. "What's the most memorable elimination in Total Drama history?"

I thought about it. I'd read other fans' blogs about Total Drama – I'd even scanned ones that I knew Sierra had written (they rambled a lot, but I could tell it was her because it had that same crazy energy, and if it mentioned Cody, it mentioned him twenty times when five would do). They left me in no doubt which one Ella was talking about.

"Lindsay in the first season." I said straight off. "Are you saying you're going to go off on someone and swear at them like crazy?"

Ella laughed. "Me? I would never do that! No, I just have my own way of making my elimination memorable."

It was true. She said a goodbye to each of us in turn, then insisted on singing a song about how she had fun and she'd miss us. Chris was furious, but he couldn't stop her.

Eventually, Ella's bird friends helped her into the cannon, as she sang " _I lost the race and now I'm paying the price, and soon will be launched from this cannon device..._

 _I'll do my best not to die, cause now I have to say goodBYE..."_ Chris shot the cannon and Ella's last note rose an octave higher as her voice faded into the distance.

I was kind of subdued that night. I didn't even bother to listen in to confessionals. I knew Sky and Shawn well enough that I didn't need to do that any more. Besides, ten minutes after Shawn disappeared off somewhere and Sky and I were walking back to the treehouse, she spoke up. "Julie, there's something I need to ask about. When we get back to the treehouse, can we talk?"

 **What's Sky going to ask Julie? Hint: It's not going to make things easy for her in the next challenge.**

 **Also, please check out my Goosebumps story "A Ghost Of A Friendship". You don't have to have read the Goosebumps series to understand it.**


	14. Chapter 14

**Okay. One of my favourite challenges coming up. No talent show of course, but that's all right. Thanks for reviewing, Nicky Haugh, OmniPlanckInstant (so what does that actually tell you?), Gage The Hedgehog, Bloodylilcorpse, PokemonFTW, SuperKitty4789 and TheProtecterOfHim.**

I should have known what Sky was going to ask me. Her voice was quiet, but her tone was firm as she said "I want to hear the truth. How many times have you manipulated everyone in this game?"

But instead of expecting it, I was actually surprised. "I haven't manipulated people, Sky!" I insisted. "Maybe I've pushed a few things further than I needed to, but they were all bound to happen."

"Stop lying!" Sky said forcefully. "It's not that hard to notice. You've used people all the time. You only teamed up with Shawn yesterday and made me pair up with Ella because you thought she wouldn't be strong enough."

"Life and death." I replied simply. "This is a _game._ When it's survival of the fittest, I need someone stronger on my side, and I knew you'd look after Ella for me. Why does that make you think I've manipulated people?"

Then Sky pulled out another accusation that I'd almost forgotten. "Well, what about Sugar?" she challenged. "I'm pretty sure it was your intervention that made everyone vote her off. Otherwise, it would have been me."

I gave a sigh. "You're yelling at me for an act that _saved_ you? We had to vote off someone! I was sick of the way Sugar was treating Ella. Of course I talked Ella up a bit while telling Sugar off for being mean to her. I didn't _make_ Sugar show herself up when she laughed at Ella getting electrocuted."

"Yes, but that's not the only elimination you've helped cause, is it?" Sky said stubbornly. "It's the final three. Can't you be honest now? How many?"

I wasn't getting out of this one. I wasn't a born manipulator – not really. I could do some, but without the overheard confessionals, I wouldn't have been able to. "I guess I might've said something that caused Topher's elimination." I mumbled. "But only because I didn't want the team to vote off an undeserving Sammy. And I listened in to a few of our teammates to help decide some of my votes."

Unfortunately, this didn't help my case. "You listened in to confessionals?!" Sky went pink, her dark eyes hard. "I can't believe you, Julie! I thought you were a decent person at first! But you're just like...I don't know, someone who was like the designated villain of the last few seasons!"

"Oh, come on, Sky!" I snapped. "You're here to win, just like me. I heard you say that after the second challenge. Are you honestly comparing me to people like...I don't know, Alejandro? Heather? Courtney?"

"Maybe you're not quite like Heather," Sky said, "But you've been faking friendliness for a while now and listening into confessionals! So yes, I am comparing you to Alejandro...and Scott, for that matter."

"Listen to yourself!" I said, now frustrated. "I didn't try to lead the team and sabotage people like Scott did. And I wasn't faking friendliness! I genuinely liked Ella and Beardo! I didn't vote either of them off, in case you didn't notice. And I liked you and Dave and Shawn too! I liked Sammy and Jasmine. It's true I didn't like Amy or Sugar, and I was never quite sure about Scarlett, but I was not pretending to be friendly! I really liked most of the people on here! Why are you acting like I've committed some horrible crime? I mean, I know you don't like cheating, but I haven't cheated! And I thought you didn't like trash talk, but that's what you're doing right now! Why, Sky? I mean, fine, you can try to beat me tomorrow, but there's no point in all this!"

"Fine." Sky scowled at me. "I will try to beat you tomorrow. And I'm going to tell Shawn everything you just told me, so he's on his guard, too. Trust me, you won't be in the finale. I'd rather lose to Shawn than let you in the final two!"

With that, Sky left the treehouse, her face still flushed with anger. I was left feeling like a total jerk. Even though I'd tried to justify the things I'd done, and I truly believed I hadn't done anything totally evil, Sky's words really got to me. She'd had no right to go off on me like that, but then, had I had the right to sway Team Kinosewak to ditch Topher all those days ago?

Well, it was still a game. It wasn't really fair of Sky to call me a villain. I was sure I hadn't joined the ranks of those we'd listed.

From the end of that argument to the next morning, Sky didn't say a word to me. I said "Good morning" when we got up, but she just narrowed her eyes at me and didn't reply.

I tried to get a reaction out of her. "Oh, come on, Sky! Do you have to be so childish? You can be civil without going easy on me, you know! I'm not asking you to be friends with me – just be a little nicer!"

"Good morning." Sky muttered out, not really looking at me properly. Then she went back to ignoring me as she climbed out of the treehouse.

I went to the confessional after that. "There's no point in using this to listen in on people anymore, anyway, so I might as well start using it for its intended purpose." I shrugged at the camera. "I know enough about Sky and Shawn already, plus Sky will probably check I'm nowhere around next time she uses this thing. But I'm not the villain she's making me out to be! Right? I'm just playing the game! How can that be so wrong?"

Well, my feelings aside, I couldn't change Sky's mind. By the time Chris called us to the challenge and we'd reached the meeting area, I could tell she'd already done as she'd said she would and told Shawn about my strategies. His glance at me wasn't exactly angry, but I could tell he wasn't too likely to let me into the finale either., even if he beat Sky today. It was still an unfriendly look.

"Children of competition," Chris said brightly, "Your toughest challenge yet will be in three parts. Head to head to head."

"Meaning?" I said.

"Each player gets to create one of those parts."

"I get to create my own challenge?" Sky said excitedly.

"You all do, within reason." Chris told her. "Winner of each challenge gets three points, second place gets two, and the loser gets one. After all three challenges, the player with the lowest total points gets to see the inside of the cannon – briefly. The two highest scorers get to battle it out in the finale."

We all made confessionals this time, although the other two insisted I go first. "My challenge is going to be simple." I told the confessional. "I'm not sure how good Sky will be. Oh well, it's not gymnastics – that would be a disaster. And it's not going to involve crazy agility, either, since I know that's Shawn's strength. My theory is, as long as I choose something I'm good at that I know they're not necessarily amazing at, I'm more likely to get it right. I just wish _my_ strengths weren't so close to theirs! If only I had Ella's singing voice, or Izzy's combat skills, or...not Zoey's agility, that's Sky's thing – but B's inventing skills would be awesome, or Dawn's ability to talk to animals...though not sure how I could make that into a challenge. It's all about my strengths and Sky and Shawn's weaknesses. Problem is, they have so few weaknesses and so many strengths. And by the way, if you two are outside listening in, I respect both of you. No matter which of us goes home today, that stands. You two can be mad at me all you want, but I'm not trying to butter you up here and make you go easy. I know you guys'll put up a good fight. But seriously, if you're expecting me to threaten lawyers on Chris or get seriously mad if I get eliminated, you're wrong. I'm not the villain, no matter what you think."

I knew perfectly well that my competitors were thinking along the same lines – what weaknesses did we have that they could exploit?

Sky got to do her challenge first. It was a 100m hurdles race.

I had to make a confessional about that. "Oh, Sky." I sighed. "You should've chosen something more along the gymnastics side. This is just progressive high jump and running. Too bad, girl. Next time, try something with a few flips."

Of course, Chris added some surprises, but it didn't matter. Shawn started falling behind almost instantly, while Sky and I were almost neck-and-neck for most of the race. Then she fell into a pit, and as for me? Well, I jumped over a beehive and ended up with quite a few stings.

But it didn't matter. I still made my last hurdle just a fraction before Sky. She sped up, but so did I. We crossed the finish line, almost together. But my foot touched the ground after the line just half a second before her.

"Julie wins!" Chris announced. "Three points for her. Two for Sky in second place, and Shawn gets one point for effort."

Sky shot a glare at me. I shrugged and smiled back. My challenge was next. As long as I won that one, I was in the finale, since even if I lost Shawn's challenge, I'd still have seven points, and only one of us could get eight (if I didn't win all three, no one could get a perfect nine).

"The challenge is a footrace around the whole island!" Chris explained. "Only on the ground, though – it was specified that no tree-hopping was allowed." (I didn't want to take that risk, otherwise Shawn would definitely win). "Of course, again, I thought this was a pretty boring challenge, so I added another few surprises to-"

"Make things more interesting." I interrupted. "We've heard it all before. If Alejandro and Heather can predict you saying it by the end of one season, so can we."

I should've kept my big mouth shut. Today became my worst day on the island – well, okay, second worst. At least I didn't look death in the face. You know what Chris did? So many obstacles were easy enough to avoid. About three-quarters of the race passed, and I was in the lead. I kept running, running, running...

And fell.

I'd tripped over a tree stump. Of all the things that could've stopped me, a stupid tree stump that wasn't even real like everything else on the island was the thing to trip me.

And guess what? Yeah, I couldn't have just twisted my ankle a little bit. No, I didn't sprain it either. After Chef checked me over, he told me I'd _broken_ it. So a tree stump got me a broken ankle! Yeah, how was that fair?

I had to try to be brave, though. I smiled at Sky and Shawn. "Well, I guess the semifinals are over. Good luck tomorrow, guys. I'll be thinking of you."

"Wait," Chris said, laughing. "This doesn't mean the semifinals are over. All this means, Julie, is that I get to fire you out of a cannon. Sky and Shawn still have to do Shawn's challenge."

So I watched them. All they had to do was get to the finish line without touching the ground. Well, Shawn wanted a scavenger hunt to find government documents proving that there was the development of a zombie virus, but you can guess why Chris couldn't okay that. He didn't add anything dangerous to the challenge, but that was because there were a few things already in the trees.

Both of them seemed to do pretty well, and in the end, Sky narrowly won, due to a monkey with a chainsaw. Not that it mattered.

I had to wait to get a cast and crutches until I left the island, so I ended up spending the rest of the day sitting around with a throbbing pain. But just before elimination, the two finalists came back to where I was sitting. They were both smiling.

"We figured it would take a while for you to get to the elimination area." Sky explained.

"So we thought we might as well help you get there." Shawn added.

The two of them played crutches for me. And as we walked (or in my case, hopped), we talked a bit more pleasantly.

"I broke my ankle a couple of years ago." Sky told me. "I know how much it hurts."

"And it must suck to get taken out of the competiton by injury." Shawn said. "Sorry it had to end this way."

I managed a smile. "Thanks. It means a lot to hear you guys saying that. Especially since I expected Sky to consider it my karma."

Sky thought about that. Finally, she said "Well, I guess I sort of do. But I didn't think you deserved to break your ankle over the win. I mean, it _is_ really painful. I'm not taking back what I said yesterday, but me saying you didn't deserve to be in the finale didn't mean I wanted you to get taken out like this. I wanted you to lose fair and square."

As I said, it really did mean a lot that my co-competitors were that supportive. My last words on Pahkitew Island as Chris pressed the button, were simply "Play hard, guys!"

 **Yes, Julie is out, and we have our original final two. I know a lot of you expected Julie to make it to the finale, but let's face it, villains never win this show. This was just Julie's time to go. As she runs track, I thought the footrace made the most sense as her challenge, and I figured she'd also be good at the hurdles race. Consider her broken ankle the same thing as Heather losing her hair or Justin getting pushed off a building, or Alejandro getting burned by lava, or Scott mauled by Fang. It seems like a good middle ground – Julie is injured, but she'll heal fairly easily, and she can communicate well. It's not painless like Heather, but it doesn't go too far like Scott.**


	15. Chapter 15

**All right. The finale. But first, a catch-up. Thank you for reviewing, Nicky Haugh (I can't tell if that's positive or negative), OmniPlanckInstant (Chris would have let her carry on if she wanted to, but she was sensible enough to forfeit), Gage the Hedgehog (thank you), Bloodylilcorpse (I meant for Sky to be a bit overly harsh, because most people who have used Julie's tactics are much worse overall), SuperKitty4789 (thanks), SilentSinger948 (fair enough, although I'm sure there are characters that have a bit more of a less heroic edge that are similar in some seasons) and the guest reviewer (see below).**

 **Also, I never said villains don't make it far. Even when they win (which has only happened to Alejandro – Heather doesn't count since she wasn't the main villain in that season), the antagonist gets some major comeuppance. I didn't want Julie to win, because it is an unspoken rule of common courtesy not to listen in on confessionals.**

Of course, the eliminated contestants didn't just go home. Chris had a Losers Mansion built on the mainland. The cannon actually landed each contestant in a bouncy castle, and then they'd be taken to the mansion, where they'd remain until the end of the season – although, as I had hoped for, they were returning to the tradition of bringing the losers back to watch the finale.

For me, after my landing, a few interns got to take me into the local hospital to get my ankle X-rayed and put in a cast (a green one, like my T-shirt), and gave me crutches to use for the next seven weeks of healing.

Then when I got back to the mansion, I was allocated a downstairs bedroom and met up with the rest of the cast. Ella was delighted to see me and greeted me with a huge hug. Beardo, too, made a fanfare and then started asking questions about how the season was.

Meanwhile, all around, everyone was doing their own thing. Sammy and Jasmine were hanging out together, talking. I noticed Amy staring at them jealously. She clearly wished she'd made a friend, but hadn't. Topher was acting like a total diva, complaining about everything, clearly still mad at being voted off early. While that was going on, Rodney kept staring at various people – well, various girls. Leonard was at his elbow, asking him if he required a love spell.

Dave seemed happy enough sitting around, reading or just relaxing. I could tell by the dreamy look on his face that he was thinking about Sky and the relationship they'd have after the season ended. His first question to me when I greeted him was "Has Sky said anything about me since I left?"

"She's focusing on the game." I reminded him. "I think she misses you, but she's been so wrapped up in winning that she's putting all her energy into that for now. It'll all be over soon, and then she'll probably have plenty of good stuff to say about you."

Scarlett wasn't at the mansion at all. Apparently she'd been taken away and sectioned the minute she got here. Max was still around, but since no one at the mansion was paying much attention to him, he was looking pretty lost. I almost felt sorry for Mr Evil Dude. As for Sugar, I didn't actually see her. She was probably up in her room in the mansion.

As for Ella, Beardo and I, we hung out as a trio. It turned out that they'd become friendly when Ella arrived, since they were both into sound – Beardo with his sound effects and beatboxing, and Ella with her singing. "We've been talking about collaborating!" Ella told me excitedly.

But for now, we just started speculating about what the final challenge will be.

"Knowing Chris, it'll be dangerous." Beardo said decisively. "If he could sink an island last season, he could-"

"Hold up." I interrupted. "When did he sink an island?"

"Oh. I forgot you wouldn't know." Beardo looked a little sheepish. "Chris sends us all the raw footage of each show. All the All-Stars footage is available to us – most of the non-challenge stuff has been cut out, but they've kept about five to ten minutes of stuff that won't make it into the show. And from what I know about Scarlett, things could have been a lot worse than her."

"Who was the main villain?" I asked, racking my brains to remember who was on the show. Who there could be worse than Scarlett?  
Ella answered, her face going pale. "It happens that Mike has a personality we didn't see in Revenge of the Island. Even I couldn't find a single redeemable part of his personality...except that he's a part of Mike, of course. I think Mike is wonderful. But this personality seems to store up every dark thought Mike has ever had and let that make up his character."

"Wow." I commented. "I guess I'll have to watch some of those tapes tonight."

I managed to get through six episodes. I'd already seen the first one, but by the end of the evening, I knew that not only was Lindsay gone, but also Lightning, Jo, Sam, Heather (real shocker!) and Sierra (who had gone into overdrive insanity mode). And, thanks to Duncan, I now knew the name of Mike's new evil personality. " _When I was a lowly punk back in juvie, he was running the place! But back then, his name was Mal. And he is bad news."_

All I could say to that was "And Sky thought _I_ was a villain. She should see this guy."

"You haven't seen the worst of him." Beardo said, his face serious. "He tried to drown Zoey near the end."

"Well..." I said slowly, "He would've knocked her out with a branch if Sierra hadn't called out at the right time. So what happened to him?"

"He's gone for good!" Ella explained. "Mike and all his other personalities managed to shut him out. Everyone else sacrificed themselves, so Mike is all himself now. Isn't that wonderful?"

I gave a sigh. "I guess that's good for him, but...whatever. Somehow I think they'll never ask him back for another season. With his disorder no longer in effect, he's not interesting enough to warrant screentime." I paused. "Although...to be fair, it was probably good to get at least that crazy one obliterated – Total Drama would be cancelled if anyone died on there."

"You _are_ kidding, right?" asked Sammy as she was passing the room and stopped, coming in. "That's not the main reason that was a good thing."

I laughed. "Sammy, have you seen the footage of me this season? I'm always kidding about stuff. Apart from listening in to your confessionals, but I did that to everyone, so no big deal."

Sammy shrugged. "I know you've been listening in on confessionals." Then she frowned. "How many did you hear from me?"

"Only two." I said truthfully. "The first one was when you said you auditioned for the show to get away from Amy. I don't blame you on that. How come Amy got on the show?"

"She got her hands on my audition tape and decided to send one in too." Sammy explained. "I would've rather she been accepted and me not than both of us being accepted, to be honest, but once I'd signed the contract, I had to go when I was asked to. What else did you hear?"

"Just the one after the caving challenge." I answered. "You mentioned voting Amy off. Which you did. That's all."

Sammy managed a smile. "I guess you didn't use it against me, then. Who _did_ you use it against?"

I thought about it. "No one, really." I realized. "I mean, I used it to get to know the contestants, but my real strengths were on the field. Stuff I learned outside of confessionals. Like how I got Sugar out, mainly to save one of my two good friends." I smiled at Ella.

That night, I went to bed feeling okay about getting taken out of the game. Well, my ankle was still pretty painful, but not enough to keep me awake. And I didn't really feel that bad about losing to Sky and Shawn. At least they were both awesome people who deserved to win.

What was I most worried about tomorrow, when I saw the finale?

Getting down the stairs on crutches in the morning.

 **Thought I might as well end on a joke. But seriously, the finale will be next. And everyone will get to see it.**


	16. Chapter 16

**Not as many lies, and only a couple cries, but one big prize coming right up. Thanks for reviewing, Nicky Haugh (hundredth reviewer!), Bloodylilcorpse, TheProtecterOfHim, OmniPlanckInstant, SilentSinger948 and SuperKitty4789.**

The twelve of us didn't actually go back to the island to see the show. We were told that once someone won the challenge, they'd come here, so we'd at least get to congratulate the winner and talk to the runner-up. Meanwhile, we'd stay at the mansion and watch it all live. Oh, and by the way, we didn't have a choice about that. And even better, Scarlett actually got let out of wherever she'd been sent to watch it with us. Okay, so she was restrained, but still, it was a little unsettling to have her there. At least she was acting like her old nerdy self. That was nice.

And then we had to watch Chris make the two of them choose a helper – one of us. Well, sort of.

"I choose Rodney!" Sky exclaimed.

"Choose?" Chris repeated, laughing. "No no no no no no."

"But you asked us who we would-" Shawn began.

"I know, I asked you who you wanted. I did that to be mean." The way the helper was chosen was by a spinner on a monitor. They just had to press a button and whoever they landed on would be their helper. If they didn't like their first choice, they could spin again, but that was their only second chance. If they landed on the same person again, sucks to be them. They weren't allowed to request no helper.

Shawn got to choose first. He spun, and landed with luck. "Jasmine! Sweet! I'll stick with her!" An intern pointed Jasmine out to the helicopter waiting for her and the other helper.

And guess who Sky landed on? Yep. Me. It was a really awful picture of me, too. I think they'd just put a still of my face at the exact moment I lost my footing enough to end up with a lost footrace and a broken ankle. Predictably, Sky didn't want me. "It wouldn't be fair to make Julie help me with her injury. And things ended pretty badly anyway, so maybe I'll just try again."

"Are you worried she wouldn't help you because you called her a cheater and compared her to the previous cheaters of the show then told tales on her to Shawn so you could gang up against her and then only went back on anything because you felt sorry for her?"

"So not fair!" I yelled at the TV. "If I end up Sky's helper after all, I'll do my best!"

Luckily, Sky didn't land on me this time. She landed on Dave, who looked extremely excited and ran out to join Jasmine on the helicopter.

We all saw them arrive. "So, who are you guys rooting for?" I asked everyone. "My money's on Shawn, only because I like both of them and I think he has a better chance."

Beardo agreed with me, as did most of the other guys and Sugar. Ella, the twins, and Topher (the only guy who didn't agree with me) all said they preferred Sky.

Scarlett didn't take a side exactly. All she said was "Taking into consideration their previous performances during challenges and guessing the nature of the challenge due to previous finales, I estimate that Sky and Shawn have an equal chance of winning the show. However, if I had to choose my most likely finale winner, I would guess that Shawn's skills outweigh Sky's enough to give him an edge."

"I'm asking who you _want_ to win, not who you _think_ will win!" I snapped frustratedly. "Look, do you want Shawn to win, or do you want Sky to win? Pick a side!"  
"I don't have any preference, to be completely honest." Scarlett said. "I came on the show to win myself. If I must pick a side, I would have to choose Shawn, simply because I think he is the most likely winner, but I can't rule out the possibility of Sky winning."

I wasn't getting anything but logic-talk out of that girl, so I gave up and just watched as Shawn hugged Jasmine and Sky whispered to Dave that once they won this challenge, they could start planning their first date. "But there is something I need to tell you first. It won't be a big deal once it's over, but you deserve to-"

But Chris wasn't going to leave Sky enough time to tell Dave whatever she thought he deserved to know. He wanted to get the challenge underway. Once he announced is, and Dave asked if it was dangerous, Chris sighed and said the name of the challenge again, adding in the word "dangerous".

"It's gonna be dangerous." Dave whispered to Sky, who didn't look impressed at his powers of deduction. I wished I could see what she was thinking. Oh well, maybe when the episode aired, I'd get to see Shawn and Sky making confessionals. Maybe even Jasmine and Dave would make a few.

The challenge itself seemed to be going okay. Well, there were moments. The cat robot that freed Dave and Sky from that snowball (and burning off most of Dave's hair – bring the hair horror counter of TD up to 5: Heather, Sierra, Staci, Dakota and now Dave), Jasmine almost freezing to death and then getting claustrophobic while piggybacking Shawn through a mud pool, and so on. But nothing really went wrong until Chris called halftime. Then he started showing all this footage that the others hadn't seen. Confessionals first – and mostly ones I hadn't gotten the chance to hear for myself.

First, it turned out that at some point during their foraging meetings, Jasmine and Shawn had talked about what they wanted to do with the money. Shawn wanted to – guess what – build a zombie-proof bunker. Jasmine wanted to start a business – half cage-fighting school, half flower shop, and she was planning to call it "Roses are Red, Bruises are Blue". And although Shawn acted supportive, he said in the confessional that Jasmine couldn't have thought of a worse idea for the money, and there was only one worse shop name he could think of - "Bernie's Tanning Salon", which his uncle (who was not called Bernie) had tried with, and never got a customer. And plus, most businesses failed in their first year, regardless if the name was good.

"I don't know." I commented. "I'd learn cage fighting from Jas. And if I was lucky enough to get a date this Valentine's, I wouldn't mind getting flowers from a shop owned by her. Too bad she's out of the game."

The onscreen Jasmine was none too pleased with Shawn. He desperately tried to backtrack. "I made that confessional on the spur-of-the-moment! I didn't really mean what I said! Please, Jasmine, you've gotta believe me! In fact, if I win, we could split the money!"

I don't think Jasmine took most of it in. She was too angry and hurt.

Sky thought she was safe. "That's why I've been careful about what I blab in confessionals. You can't give Chris – or Julie, as it turns out –"

"Give it a rest, Sky!" I yelled at the screen.

"She can't hear you." Sugar pointed out. "It's just a screen."

"I know that." I snapped at the pageant queen. "I'm just sick of that girl demonizing me. Do you know, she compared me directly to Alejandro two nights ago, just because I'd listened in on a few confessionals?"

But Dave wasn't going to be left out. Chris had already gotten the next piece of footage up. Sky appeared on the screen in an unfamiliar setting.

"My audition tape?" the here-and-now Sky said. "Why would he-"

"Let's get to the good part." Chris said, fast-forwarding it.

I understood exactly why he'd wanted Dave to see it when the onscreen Sky had spoken. " _...but if I do get on the show, I'll really miss my boyfriend Keith."_

We all gasped.

"Sky has a boyfriend?"

"She said there were complications at home!" I remembered. "And that must've been what she was trying to tell Dave just before the challenge."

But it didn't look like there was much hope for their relationship now. Sky tried to say it. "Dave, listen – I tried to tell you before this challenge. I _do_ have a boyfriend, but I was going to break up with him, I swear – I had to say that because he was there when I made that tape! I just ran out of time before we left – you're the one I like!"

As it was, the footage was supposed to be motivation. The island was back online, and Chris wanted Dave and Jasmine to make the rest of the challenge – a race to the finish line – as tricky as possible. And if neither of the finalists made it to the finish line, the helpers got to split the money.

And it looked as if that was going to happen for a few minutes. Shawn was reasonably cool about it. "I guess she's gonna get her flower shop/fighting school. Good for you, Jasmine!"

But Sky, for the first time, revealed that she wasn't as cool a player as I thought she was. "It's not fair!" she raged. "No, no, no, no, NO!" With each word, she stamped her foot.

That was how their chances actually got better – they were on a tall column, and Sky's stamping cracked it enough to send them flying. We didn't see who reached the finish line first.

At first, Chris declared the helpers the winners. Then Jasmine spoke up, her face full of concern. "Is Shawn okay?"

Dave, who had been looking excited up until then, became the picture teenager for guilt. "And Sky?" he asked. "I must've gotten carried away – she had to have really liked me to not tell me she was off-limits."

But that was it. A hand popped out of the ice just ahead of the finish line, waving frantically. Chef came up, and pulled at the hand. Up came...

"Did I...yes! I won! I won!"

Sky. Yeah, she'd been a tiny bit ahead during the tumble past the finish line. After that, Jasmine ran in and found Shawn. She had definitely comprehended what Shawn had said to her earlier on, because she seemed to have forgiven him.

And although Dave still hadn't quite gotten over the shock of Sky having a boyfriend, he seemed placated when she went to him, tried to take his hand (he looked as if he was about to pull away for a moment, but didn't) and said softly "I'm sorry I wasn't quite honest with you. Give me a chance to explain properly once we're off the island?"

And as the helicopter left the screen, Leonard cried out "Let's go to greet them, brethren! They have completed a most noble task, and we must congratulate the Skylander!"

I grinned at him. "You know something, Leonard? I think that's the first time you've made any sense."

And that was it. The end of the season.

 **But the story's not over yet! Keep reading!**


	17. Epilogue

**All right. I promised one last chapter, and here it is. Thanks for reviewing, OmniPlanckInstant, Nicky Haugh, Bloodylilcorpse, SuperKitty4789, SilentSinger948 and Gage the Hedgehog.**

We got to hold a victory party for Sky in the mansion, since it was our last night as Total Drama cast members. Chris wasn't with us, since we were going home first thing tomorrow. All he said before he left was "Awesome season, everyone! Oh, and I invited anyone from the other casts to come by the mansion if they wanted to meet you all. Have fun, kids!"

A few people did come by. None of the really, really tough competitors with competitive streaks, but the nice ones. First, Mike and Zoey actually turned up.

The door was answered by Ella. "Oh, hi!" she greeted them. Then she called out "Guys, we've got our first two visitors!"

Not everyone came to meet them, but most of us did. I was the first, since I was really starting to learn how to run on crutches. "Well, look who it is. The All-Star couple!" I grinned. "No doubt taking a break from all the drama of last season. I've only seen half the show so far, so I don't know how it ends, but I heard you guys won. And I also heard that you're totally yourself now, Mike?"

Mike smiled nervously. "Yeah. All me."

"Well, come on in!" Jasmine exclaimed. "What's keeping you guys?"

I was sort of surprised the two of them showed up, considering how much crap they'd been through in two seasons (and considering that Mike must've felt majorly guilty after he saw the kind of stuff Mal had been up to). As it turned out, they were really just that nice, and wanted to make sure everyone was okay.

Well, as it was, we were all fine. I mean, I was the only one with a cast (which I got them to sign). Everyone at school would be totally jealous that I'd met Mike and Zoey!

Well, there was more to come! Halfway through the afternoon, we got a visit from Owen, who really lit up the house with his presence. He signed my cast, too. And finally, Beth dropped by with Lindsay in tow, just for a short time. Soon, I had their signatures on my cast.

Our victory party was a lot of fun. I even got the chance to smooth things over with Sky. Then, the next day, we all went home, Sky with an extra suitcase packed with one million dollars.

Being home was almost heaven. I couldn't believe how happy I was to be back, able to wear clothes other than my jeans and track team top – especially since it was probably best to stick to shorts and skirts until my ankle healed.

In the month leading up to the first Pahkitew Island episode airing, I caught up on All-Stars, as well as doing all the usual things. My friends were desperate to hear some spoilers before they saw the show. Not big stuff, like the elimination order or Scarlett's reveal, but little things, like the people in the cast and the challenges.

I kept in touch with Beardo and Ella, of course. As it turned out, Ella lived in an apartment that was only about half an hour away from my house (although we didn't go to the same school), so we met up frequently. And I was right – my parents loved her.

"You're welcome here any time." my mom told her specifically.

I think they thought Ella would be a good influence on me. Well, actually, they were wrong. I think I influenced Ella more than she influenced me. She was still really nice to everyone and hardly ever got into trouble, but she picked up my sense of humour, and soon, we could giggle at the same things for hours on end. And more than once, we had a two-person karaoke session in my house – once we even sang all the World Tour songs, taking on different roles in each song – like in "Come Fly With Us", I'd be Cody, Lindsay, Duncan, Courtney, Leshawna and Noah (I just had to grab the line "Come fly with us, come die with us"). Generally, I let Ella take the bigger singing roles. When we did "Boyfriend Kisser", I let her be Courtney, and I was Heather (as well as taking on Sierra's "Duh. It was so obvious!"), and as for "I'm Gonna Make It", she got to be Cody and Heather, while I was Alejandro (he sang the least in that song) and Sierra. Other times, we just lounged around, chatting, or a couple of times, we went shopping (we'd probably do it more once my ankle had healed).

Then, finally, the day came. My television debut. The day I would finally become a star...okay, no, I'm still no celeb, not even minor. I was just a twelve-episode wonder.

I was feeling nervous, to be honest. My parents were watching with me, of course, and I was worried about their reaction.

At least, for one thing, the opening sequence showed me in an okay light. Certainly better than Amy dumping a bucket of blueberries on Sammy and Sugar pushing Ella off a cliff. No, I was shown trying to copy Beardo's sound effects (I'm not sure how they got my mouth to imitate those movements, since I hadn't actually done that...then again, I don't think Sugar ever actually shoved Ella off a cliff either).

My parents hadn't met Beardo, since he lived quite a way away, but we Skyped each other often. We weren't going to lose touch.

"It seems like there's a few...interesting people on this season." Dad said, which was his way of being tactful.

My first appearance gave me a shock. I mean, I knew it was coming, because I'd been there, but seeing a six-week younger version of me come up to Amy and suggest she move somewhere else was so weird. I was used to seeing other people on TV. But this was _me._ Me, not doing anything special, just being myself.

I noticed that each cast member got a first line as a sort of character establishing moment. You know, the nice girl, the wannabe villain, the normal guy, the wizard, etc. Scarlett, of course, was established as the nerd. The last person was Shawn, who, if you remember, wrapped his arms around his head and freaked out when he heard the word "brains".

Then came the parachute sequence. I noticed my parents exchanging approving looks when my onscreen self prayed for my life. However, they didn't approve of Chris.

"How could the producers allow such irresponsibility?" Mom remarked. "I assume everyone survived?"

I grinned. "Closest anyone got to death was Max's parachute getting caught on a tree." I replied.

We got to see Max threatening to burn the tree if it didn't let him go, actually. Then we saw Chris creating the teams, giving us the challenge, yadda yadda yadda. It was sort of interesting to see what was going on with the other team, since I hadn't taken much notice of them. Things like Amy shielding herself from the tennis balls with Sammy, Rodney becoming smitten with Jasmine and Topher asking Chris to let him watch his cut to commercial. And I had probably been right to get him booted. At least, I thought so from Chris' comment of "I like this kid."

Episodes 1 and 2 were pretty easy on me. I only had one sticky moment with my parents for using the expression "for Christ's sake". Yeah, they kept me yelling at the twins. However, they took out the part where I discussed with my team who was going home.

I also could tell without being told who my parents liked and didn't like. They were already biased towards me, of course, and they already liked Ella. I could tell they were all right with most of my team, bar Sugar, although at times they disapproved of Dave's attitude (although he'd probably be a much more obedient kid than me). They were all right with Jasmine, but they thought Max's behaviour was too immature, and, like me, could not find a thing to like about Amy. Sammy they were fine with, although they had some doubts about Topher, and while Rodney's "love" for Jasmine proved to be fickle, since he switched his affections to Amy the next day, I don't think they hated him. And as for Scarlett...well, let's put it this way: Since I wasn't giving away any spoilers, they didn't understand why I didn't like her. At least, not until they heard her making confessionals about trying to make her team hate Max enough to vote him off in the sixth episode.

"That's absolutely disgusting." Mom said bluntly. "Max trusts her to help him, and all the time she's plotting to get rid of him."

"But Mom, you've seen the way he's treating her." I protested. "It's like he thinks she's a slave."

"She should still rise above it." Dad said. "That's the noble thing to do."

I was starting to feel the tiniest bit disliked, ever since they'd seen me using an unwitting Ella to help me manipulate Team Kinosewak into getting Topher out. They'd given me a pass on booting Sugar, though, since I was protecting Ella.

The last couple of episodes before the merge that eliminated the twins were actually pretty dull to watch. Still, it was a little interesting to see the rest of my team in the cave. And who would've thought it – Shawn actually hindered Sky and Ella when they got into a cave full of jewels because he took one. I mean, Ella liked them, but after Chris' warning, she didn't even touch one. Shawn got a confessional with the gem. I had to wonder if he ended up taking it home after the season. It would explain why he was more willing to split the million with Jasmine – he could easily get the lost half of the million by selling the jewel. Possibly. Okay, it was probably rose quartz, so probably not, but it was large and I could be wrong.

I couldn't believe when I watched the food poisoning fiasco that Scarlett actually straight out said something about gaining control of the island.

"Foreshadowing." I muttered. My parents both looked at me questioningly, and I shrugged. "Scarlett's just got the first hint of an idea only Jasmine had noticed before. I hadn't noticed it either."

Funny, even knowing the end of Episode Ten didn't mar the tension created in it. As it was, I got to see Scarlett's epic reveal, when she first took off her glasses and let her hair free from its bun, screaming at Max that once and for all, she was NOT his sidekick. Boy, did she look scary. Scarier than it was when we first saw her – that murderous expression...

"I understand why you dislike Scarlett now." Dad admitted. "There was no excuse for what she did."

The next episode was a breather. Then Sky went off on me at the start of the next episode, and I was worried about what my parents would think. It was the first time my parents heard that I'd been listening in on the confessionals. In fact, after this scene, it showed flashbacks of Sammy, Shawn, Amy, Scarlett, and a few others making confessionals. But this time, I was shown hanging around outside, listening.

"It's not a big deal." I insisted at home. "You've seen what I've done. I tried to help Shawn and Jasmine get it together by letting them know the other liked them. I knew I needed to keep a closer eye on Scarlett. It's not like I used the confessionals to manipulate anyone!"

"That's not the point." Mom told me sternly. "It was an unfair thing to do, Julie. You know that, otherwise you would have been open about doing it. You were dishonest, and while I'm sorry it happened, I understand why Sky was so angry with you."

I scowled. "Whatever. Karma got me back, I guess."

When I disappeared out of the cannon, Chris turned to the camera. "You know something? I didn't think seeing Julie go would make me happier than the idea of seeing her go...but it just did."

I scowled harder. I mean, I sort of knew Chris didn't like me much because I never kept quiet when he wanted me to, but did he have to be so glad to see me out of a chance to win?

The finale was bread and butter, I'd already seen everything important of it. Apart from Chris' valley girl confessionals about how he was "so confused" about what the deal with Sky and Dave was, that is.

Finally, the season was over, both in real life and on TV. And yet, nothing had really come of it. Well, okay, my parents were a little mad at me, but that would fade with time.

On the whole, I was glad I'd gone on Total Drama. I had made two good friends (and I kept in touch with the others on Facebook, excluding Amy, Scarlett and Sugar – I probably would've sent a friend request to Sugar, but she only had a promotional page and I didn't want to have to like it to get in touch, plus I couldn't be bothered with her – I only would've sent it to be nice anyway), beaten the odds in general, gotten to meet a couple of the veteran stars, and had a run on TV. And while I wasn't really a celeb at all, I got a short taste of it at school.

Yeah, I got tonnes of questions about what the cast was really like. The show had cut out a lot of my friendship/bonding with my two friends, so I told them all about them. I also made it clear that I hadn't seen any more of Scarlett's full capabilities than they had – less, actually, since I didn't see her original reveal.

Oh, and one more thing before I finish this.

I checked it out a few days after the finale. Since I'd friended most of my co-stars on Facebook, I was just surfing. Then I saw the notification.

DAVE AND SKY ARE DATING!

And that's it. Bye!

 **I thought that after all the drama I went through to end Skave nicely, I might as well give them a happy ending. If it had gone down this way on the show, it might not be my least favourite TD couple.**

 **Hope you liked this story, and let me know, what did you think? Did I improve Pahkitew Island for you? Would you have preferred any of my changes to be in the actual show? Were there any changes you really hated? What would you have liked to change about the season?**

 **See you next time, everyone!**


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